FROM THE LIBRARY OF 
REV. LOUIS FITZGERALD BENSON. D. D, 

BEQUEATHED BY HIM TO 

THE LIBRARY OF 

PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 






THE 




\/ 



CHRISTIAN LIFE; 



ITS COURSE, ITS HINDRANCES, 
AND ITS HELPS. 



BY 

THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D., 

HEAD MASTER OF RUGBY SCHOOL, 
ND LATE FELLOW OP ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD. 



|r0m \\i lifll] l0itte %Wm. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

LINDSAY & BLAKISTON, 

1856. 



"As far as the principle on whicli Archbishop Laud and his fol- 
lowers acted went to re-actuate the idea of the church, as a co-ordi- 
nate and living power by right of Christ's institution and express 
promise, I go along with them ; but I soon discover that by the 
church they meant the clergy, the hierarchy exclusively, and then I 
fly off from them in a tangent. 

*' For it is this very interpretation of the church, that, according 
to my conviction, constituted the first and fundamental apostasy; 
and I hold it for one of the greatest mistakes of our polemical 
divines, in their controversies with the Romanists, that they trace 
all the corruptions of the gospel faith to the Papacy.'' — Coleridge, 
Literary Remains, vol. iii. p. 386. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

INTRODUCTION 13 



LECTURE I. 

Gen. iii. 22. — And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is 
become as one of us, to know good and evil 59 



LECTURE II. 

1 CoR. xiii. 11. — ^When I was a child I spake as a child, I under- 
stood as a child, I thought as a child ; but when I became a 
man, I put away childish things 66 



LECTURE III. 

1 CoR. xiii. 11. — When I was a child I spake as a child, I under- 
stood as a child, I thought as a child ; but when I became a 
man, I put away childish things 74 

1* (V) 



jL,±iU r u K£ I V. 

FAOB 

Col. i. 9. — We do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that 
ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom 
and spiritual understanding 81 



LECTURE V. 

CoL. i. 9. — "We do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye 
might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom 
and spiritual understanding 



LECTURE VI. 

Col. iii. 3. — Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in 
God 99 



LECTURE YII. 

1 CoR. iii. 21 — 23. — All things are yours; whether Paul, or 
Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things 
present, or things to come ; all are yours, and ye are Christ's ; 
and Christ is God's 105 



LECTURE VIII. 

Gal. v. 16, 17.— Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the 
lusts of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, 
and the Spirit against the flesh ; and these are contrary 
the one to the other, so that ye cannot do the things that 
ye would 113 



CONTENTS. VU 

LECTURE IX. 

PAGE 

Luke xiv. 33. — Whosoever be be of you that ibrsaketh not all 
that he hath, he cannot be my disciple 121 



LECTURE X. 

1 Tim. i. 9. — The law is not made for a righteous man, but for 
the la-svless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, 
for the unholy and profane 129 



LECTURE XI. 

Luke xsi. 36. — Watch ye, therefore, and pray always, that ye 
may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall 
come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man 137 



LECTURE XII. 

Proy. i. 28. — Then shall they call upon me, but I will not 
answer : they shall seek me early, but they shall not 
find me 145 



LECTURE XIII. 

Mark xii. 34. — Thou art not far from the kingdom of God .... 153 

LECTURE XIV. 
Matt. xxii. 14. — For many are called, but few are chosen 161 



t 



VIU CONTENTS 



LECTURE XV. 

PAGE 

Luke xi. 25. — When he cometh he findeth it swept and 

garnished. 
John v. 42. — I know you, that ye have not the love of God in 

you 169 



LECTURE XYI. 

Matt. xi. 10. — I send my messenger before thy face, who shall 
prepare thy way before thee 177 



LECTURE XVII. 

1 CoR. ii. 12. — AYe have received not the Spirit of the world, but 
the Spirit which is of God 185 



LECTURE XYIII. 

Ge?^. xxvii. 38. — And Esau said unto his father, Hast thou 
but one blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, 
my father. 

Matt. xv. 27. — And she said. Truth, Lord : yet the dogs eat of 
the crumbs which fall from their master's table 193 



LECTURE XIX 

Matt. xxii. 32. — God is not the God of the dead, but of the 
living 201 



CONTENTS. IX 

LECTURE XX. 

PAGK 

EzEK. xiii. 22. — With lies ye have made the heart of the right- 
eous sad, whom I have not made sad ; and strengthened the 
hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his 
wicked way, by promising him life 209 



LECTURE XXI, 



ADVENT SUNDAY. 



Heb. iii. 16. — For some when they had heard did provoke ; how- 
beit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses 217 



LECTURE XXII, 



CHRISTMAS DAY. 

John i. 10. — He was in the world, and the world was made by 
him, and the world knew him not 225 



LECTURE XXIII. 

SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE EASTER. 

Matt. xxvi. 40, 41. — What, could ye not watch with me one 
hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation; 
the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak 234 



LECTURE XXIV. 

GOOD FRIDAY. 

Romans v. 8. — God commendeth his love towards us, in that, 

while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us 242 



X- CONTENTS. 

LECTURE XXV. 



EASTER DAY. 

PAGE 



John xx. 20. — Then the disciples 'v\'ent away again unto their 
own home 250 



LECTURE XXVI. 

WHITSUNDAY. 

Acts xix. 2. — Have you received the Holy Ghost since ye 
believed ? 258 

LECTURE XXVII. 

TRINITY SUNDAY. 

^'^ John iii. 9. — How can these things be ? 266 

LECTURE XXVIII. 

ExoD. iii. 6. — And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look 

upon God. 
Luke xxiii. 30. — Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, 

Fall on us ; and to the hills. Cover us 274 

LECTURE XXIX. 

Psalm cxxxvii. 4. — How shall we sing the Lord's song in a 
strange land? 282 

LECTURE XXX. 

1 Cor. xi. 26. — For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this 
cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come 289 



CONTENTS. XI 

LECTURE XXXI. 

PAaE 
Luke i. 3, 4. — It seemed good to me, also, having had perfect 
understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto 
thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest 
knovr the certainty of those things wherein thou hast been 
instructed 297 

LECTURE XXXII. 

Luke i. 3, 4. — It seemed good to me, also, having had perfect 
understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto 
thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest 
know the certainty of those things wherein thou hast been 
instructed 304 

LECTURE XXXIII. 

John ix. 29. — We know that God spake unto Moses ; as for this 
fellow, we know not from whence he is 311 



LECTURE XXXIV. 

1 CoR.xiv. 20. — Brethren, be not children in understanding: how- 
beit, in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men.. 320 



LECTURE XXXV. 

Matt. xxvi. 45, 46. — Sleep on now and take your rest ; behold 
the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the 
hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going : behold he is at hand 
that doth betray me 32S 



3ni CONTENTS. 

LECTURE XXXVI. 

PAOX 

2 Cor. v. 17, 18. — Old things are passed away ; behold all things 
are become new, and all things are of God, who hath recon- 
ciled us to himself by Jesus Christ 336 

LECTURE XXXVII. 

EzEK. XX. 49. — Then said I, Ah, Lord God! they say of me Doth 
he not speak parables ? 344 

LECTURE XXXVIII. 

Isaiah v. 1. — Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my 
beloved touching his vineyard 352 

LECTURE XXXIX. 

CoL. iii. 17. — Whatsoever ye do in the word or deed, do all in the 
name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father 
by Him 365 

Notes 373 



INTRODUCTION. 



The contents of this volume will be found, I hope, to 
be in agreement with its title. 

Amongst the helps of Christian life, the highest place 
is due to the Christian church and its ordinances. I 
have been greatly misunderstood with respect to my 
estimate of the Christian church, as distinguished from 
the Christian religion. I agree so far with those, from 
whom I in other things most widely differ, that I hold the 
revival of the church of Christ in its full perfection, to 
be the one great end to which all our efforts should be 
directed. This is with me no new belief, but one which I 
have entertained for many years. It was impressed most 
strongly upon me, as it appears to have been upon others, 
by the remarkable state of affairs and of opinions which 
we witnessed in this country about nine or ten years ago ; 
and everything since that time has confirmed it in my 
mind more and more. 

Others, according to their own statement, received the 
same impression from the phenomena of the same period. 
But the movement had begun earlier ; nor should I object 
to call it, as they do, a movement towards " something 
deeper and truer than satisfied the last century." ' It 
began, I suppose, in the last ten years of the last century, 



See Mr. Newman^s Letter to Dr. Jelf, p. 27. 

(13) 



f 



14 INTRODUCTION. 

and has ever since been working onwards, though for a 
long time slowly and seci otlj, and with no distinctly 
marked direction. But still, in philosophy and general 
literature, there have been sufficient proofs that the 
pendulum, which for nearly two hundred years had 
been swinging one way, was now beginning to swing 
back again ; and as its last oscillation brought it far 
from the true centre, so it may be, that its present 
impulse may be no less in excess, and thus may bring 
on again, in after ages, another corresponding reaction. 

Now if it be asked what, setting aside the metaphor, 

are the two points between which mankind has been thus 

moving to and fro ; and what are the tendencies in us 

which, thus alternately predominating, give so different a 

character to different periods of the human history ; 

the answer is not easy to be given summarily, for the 

generalisation which it requires is almost beyond the 

compass of the human mind. Several phenomena appear 

in each period, and it would be easy to give any one 

of these as marking its tendency: as, for instance, we 

might describe one period as having a tendency to 

despotism, and another to licentiousness : but the true 

answer lies deeper, and can be only given by discovering 

that common element in human nature which, in religion, 

in politics, in philosophy, and in literature, being 

modified by the subject-matter of each, assumes in each 

a different form, so that its own proper nature is no 

longer to be recognized. Again, it would be an error 

to suppose that either of the two tendencies which so 

affect the course of human affairs were to be called 

simply bad or good. Each has its good and evil 

nicely intermingled; and taking the highest good of 

each, it would be difficult to say which was the more 

excellent ; — taking the last corruption of each, we 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

could not determine which was the more hateful. For so 
far as we can trace back the manifold streams, flowing 
some from the eastern mountains, and some from the 
western, to the highest springs from which they rise, we 
find on the one side the ideas of truth and justice, on 
the other those of beauty and love ; — things so exalted, 
and so inseparably united in the divine perfections, that 
to set either two above the other were presumptuous and 
profane. Yet these most divine things separated from 
each other, and defiled in their passage through this 
lower world, do each assume a form in human nature of 
very great evil : the exclusive and corrupted love of truth 
and justice becomes in man selfish atheism ; the exclusive 
and corrupted worship of beauty and love becomes in man 
a bloody and a lying idolatry. 

Such would be the general theory of the two great 
currents in which human affairs may be said to have been 
successively drifting. But real history, even the his- 
tory of all mankind, and much more that of any 
particular age or country, presents a picture far more 
complicated. First, as to time : as the vessels in a 
harbour, and in the open sea without it, may be seen 
swinging with the tide at the same moment in opposite 
directions ; the ebb has begun in the roadstead, while it is 
not yet high water in the harbour ; so one or more nations 
may be in advance of or behind the general tendency of 
their age, and from either cause may be moving in the 
opposite direction. Again, the tendency or movement in 
itself is liable to frequent interruptions, and short 
counter-movements : even when the tide is coming in 
upon the shore, every wave retires after its advance ; and 
he who follows incautiously the retreating waters, may be 
caught by some stronger billow, overwhelming again for 
an instant the spot which had just been left dry. A 



16 INTRODUCTION. 

child Standing by the sea-shore for a few minutes, and 
watching this, as it seems, irregular advance and retreat 
of the water, could not tell whether it was ebb or flood; 
and we, standing for a few years on the shore of time, 
can scarcely tell whether the particular movement which 
we witness is according to or against the general 
tendency of the whole period. Farther yet, as these great 
tendencies are often interrupted, so are they continually 
mixed : that is, not only are their own good and bad 
elements successively predominant, but they never have 
the world wholly to themselves : the opposite tendency 
exists, in an under-current it may be, and not lightly 
perceptible ; but here and there it struggles to the 
surface, and mingles its own good and evil with the 
predominant good and evil of its antagonist. Wherefore 
he who would learn wisdom from the complex experience 
of history, must question closely all its phenomena, must 
notice that which is less obvious as well as that which is 
most palpable ; must judge not peremptorily or sweepingly, 
but with reserves and exceptions ; not as lightly overrun- 
ning a wide region of the truth, but thankful if after 
much pains he has advanced his landmarks only a little ; 
if he has gained, as it were, but one or two frontier fort- 
resses, in which he can establish himself for ever. 

Now, then, when Mr. Newman describes the movement 
of the present moment as being directed towards " some- 
thing better and deeper than satisfied the last century," 
this description, although in some sense true, is yet in 
practice delusive ; and the delusion which lurks in it is at 
the root of the errors of Mr. Newman and of his friends. 
They regard the tendencies of the last century as wholly 
evil ; and they appear to extend this feeling to the whole 
period of which the last century was the close, and which 
began nearly with the sixteenth century. Viewing in this 



INTRODUCTION. 17 

light the last three hundred years, they regard naturally 
with excessive favour the preceding period, with which 
they are so strongly contrasted ; and not the less because 
this period has been an object of scorn to the times which 
have followed it. They are drawn towards the enemy of 
their enemy, and they fancy that it must be in all points 
their enemy's opposite. And if the faults of its last 
decline are too palpable to be denied, they ascend to its 
middle and its earlier course, and finding that its evils are 
there less flagrant, they abandon themselves Avholly to the 
contemplation of its good points, and end with making it 
an idol. There are few stranger and sadder sights than 
to see men judging of whole periods of the history of man- 
kind with the blindness of party-spirit, never naming one 
century without expressions of contempt or abhorrence, 
never mentioning another but with extravagant and undis- 
tinguishing admiration. 

But the worst was yet to come. The period which Mr. 
Newman and his friends so disliked, had, in its religious 
character, been distinguished by its professions of extreme 
veneration for the Sci'iptures ; in its quarrel with the 
system of the preceding period, it had rested all its cause 
on the authority of the Scripture, — it had condemned the 
older system because Scripture could give no vfarrant for 
it. On the other hand, the partizans of the older system 
protested against the exclusive appeal to Scripture ; there 
was, as they maintained, another authority in religious 
matters ; if their system was not supported in all its points 
by Scripture, it had at least the warrant of Christian 
antiquity. Thus Mr. Newman and his friends found that 
the times which they disliked had professed to rely on 
Scripture alone ; the times which they loved had invested 
the Church with equal authority. It was natural then to 
connect the evils of the iron age, for so they regarded it, 
2* 



18 IXTRODUCTIOX. 

-with tliia notion of the sole supremacy of Scripture ; and 
it '^ras no less natural to associate the blessings of their 
imagined golden age Tvith its avowed reverence for the 
Church. If they appealed only to Scripture, they echoed 
the language of men whom they abhorred ; if they exalted 
the Church and Christian antiquity, they sympathised with 
a period which they were resolved to love. Their theo- 
logical writings from the very beginning have too plainly 
shown in this respect the force both of their sympathies 
and their antipathies. 

Thus previously disposed, and in their sense or appre- 
hension of the evil of their own times abeady flying as 
it were for refuge to the system of times past, they were 
overtaken by the political storm of 1831, and the two 
following years. That storm rattled loudly, and alarmed 
many who had viewed the gathering of the clouds with 
hope and pleasure ; no wonder, then, if it produced a 
stormy effect upon those who viewed it as a mere calamity, 
an evil monster bred out of an evil time, and fraught with 
nothing but mischief. Farther, the government of the 
country was now, for the first time for many years, in the 
hands of men who admired the spirit of the age, nearly as 
much as Mr. Newman and his friends abhorred it. Thus 
all things seemed combined against them : the spirit of 
the period which they so hated was riding as it were upon 
the whirlwind ; they knew not where its violence might 
burst ; and the government of the country was, as they 
thought, driving wildly before it, without attempting to 
moderate its fury. Already they were inclined to recog- 
nise the signs of a national apostasy. 

But from this point they have themselves written their 
own history. — Mr. Percival's letter to the editor of the 
Irish Ecclesiastical Journal, which was reprinted in the 
Oxford Herald of January 30, 1841, is really a document 



ixinoDUCTiox. 19 

of the highest vahie. It acquaints us, from the very best 
authority, Tvith the immediate occasion of the publication 
of the Tracts for the Times, and with the objects of their 
•writers. It tells us whither their eyes were turned for 
deliverance ; with what charm they hoped to allay the 
troubled waters. Ecclesiastical history would be far more 
valuable than it is, if we could thus learn the real 
character and views of every church, or sect, or party, from 
itself, and not from its opponents. 

Mr. Percival informs us, that the Irish Church Act of 
1833, which abolished several of the Irish Bishoprics, was 
the immediate occasion of the publication of the Tracts 
for the Times; and that the objects of that publication 
were, to enforce the doctrine of the apostolical succession, 
and to preserve the Prayer Book from " the Socinian 
leaven, with which we had reason to fear it would be 
tainted by the parliamentary alteration of it, which at 
that time was openly talked of." But the second of these 
objects is not mentioned in the more formal statements 
which Mr. Percival gives of them ; and in what he calls 
the "matured account" of the principles of the writers, it 
is only said, " Whereas there seems great danger at pre- 
sent of attempts at unauthorized and inconsiderate inno- 
vation as in other matters so especially in the service of 
our Church, we pledge ourselves to resist any attempt 
that may be made to alter the Litui-gy on insufficient 
authority : i. e. without the exercise of the free and de- 
liberate judgment of the Church on the alterations pro- 
posed." It would seem, therefore, that what was particu- 
larly deprecated was " the alteration of the Liturgy on in- 
sufficient authority," without reference to any suspected 
character of the alteration in itself. But at any rate, as 
all probability of any alteration in the Liturgy vanished 
very soon after the publication of the tracts began, the 



20 INTRODUCTION. 

other object, the maintaining the doctrine of the apos- 
tolical succession, as it had been the principal one from 
the beginning, became in a very short time the only one. 

The great remedy, therefore, for the evils of the times, 
the " something deeper and truer than satisfied the last 
century," or, at least, the most effectual means of attaining 
to it, is declared to be the maintenance of the doctrine of 
apostolical succession. Now let us hear, for it is most im- 
portant, the grounds on which this doctrine is to be en- 
forced, and the reason why so much stress is laid on it. I 
quote again from Mr. Percival's letter. 

" Considering, 1. That the only way of salvation is the 
partaking of the body and blood of our sacrificed Re- 
deemer ; 

^' 2. That the mean expressly authorized by him for 
that purpose is the holy sacrament of his supper ; 

'' 3. That the security by him no less expressly autho- 
rized, for the continuance and due application of that 
sacrament, is the apostolical commission of the bishops, 
and under them the presbyters of the church ; 

*^ 4. That under the present circumstances of the church 
in England, there is peculiar danger of these matters 
being slighted and practically disavowed, and of numbers 
of Christians being left, or tempted to precarious and un- 
authorized ways of communion, which must terminate 
often in vital apostasy : — 

" We desire to pledge ourselves one to another, reserv- 
ing our canonical obedience, as follows : — 

"1. To be on the watch for all opportunities of incul- 
cating, on all committed to our charge, a due sense of the 
inestimable privilege of communion with our Lord, through 
the successors of the apostles, and of leading them to the 
resolution to transmit it, by his blessing, unimpaired to 
their children." 



IXTRODUCTIOX. 21 

Then follow two other resolutions : one to provide and 
circulate books and tracts, to familiarize men's minds with 
this doctrine ; and the other, " to do what lies in us 
towards reviving among churchmen the practice of daily 
common prayer, and more frequent participation of the 
Lord's Supper." 

The fourth resolution, ^*to resist unauthorized altera- 
tions of the Liturgy," I have already quoted: the fifth 
and last engages generally to place within the reach of all 
men, accounts of such points in our discipline and worship 
as may appear most likely to be misunderstood or under- 
valued. 

These resolutions were drawn up more than seven years 
ago, and their practical results have not been contempt- 
ible. The Tracts for the Times amount to no. fewer than 
ninety ; while the sermons, articles in reviews, stories, 
essays, poems, and writings of all sorts which have 
enforced the same doctrines, have been also extremely 
numerous. Nor have all these labours been without fruit : 
for it is known that a large proportion of the clergy have 
adopted, either wholly or in great part, the opinions and 
spirit of the Tracts for the Times ; and many of the laity 
have embraced them also. 

It seems also, that in the various publications of their 
school, the object originally marked out in the resolutions 
quoted above, has been followed with great steadiness. 
The system has been uniform, and its several parts have 
held well together. It has, perhaps, been carried on of 
late more boldly, which is the natural consequence of 
success. It has in all points been the direct opposite of 
what may be called the spirit of English protestantism of 
the nineteenth century : upholding whatever that spirit 
^\ ould depreciate ; decrying whatever it would admire. 



22 INTRODUCTION. 

A short statement of the principal views held by Mr. 
Newman and his friends, will show this sufficiently. 

" The sacraments, and not preaching, are the sources of 
divine grace." So it is said in the Advertisement prefixed 
to the first volume of the Tracts for the Times, in exact 
conformity with the preamble to the resolutions, which I 
have already quoted. But the only security for the 
efficacy of the sacraments, is the apostolical commission 
of the bishops, and under them, of the presbyters of the 
Church. So it is said in the preamble to the resolutions. 
These two doctrines are the foundation of the whole system. 
God's grace, and our salvation, come to us principally 
through the virtue of the sacraments ; the virtue of the 
sacraments depends on the apostolical succession of those 
who administer them. The clergy, therefore, thus holding 
in their hands the most precious gifts of the Church, 
acquire naturally the title of the Church itself; the 
Church, as possessed of so mysterious a virtue as to com- 
municate to the only means of salvation their saving effi- 
cacy, becomes at once an object of the deepest reverence. 
"What wonder if to a body endowed with so transcendant a 
gift, there should be given also the spirit of wisdom to 
discern all truth ; so that the solemn voice of the Church 
in its creeds, and in the decrees of its general councils, 
must be received as the voice of God himself. Nor can 
such a body be supposed to have commended any practices 
or states of life which are not really excellent ; and the 
duty either of all Christians, or of those at least who 
would follow the most excellent way. Fasting, therefore, 
and the state of celibacy, are the one a christian obliga- 
tion, the other a christian perfection. Again, being 
members of a body so exalted, and receiving our very 
salvation in a way altogether above reason, we must be 
cautious how we either trust to our individual conscience 



INTRODUCTION. 23 

rather than to the command of the Church, or how we 
venture to exercise our reason at all in judging of what the 
Church teaches ; childlike faith and childlike obedience 
are the dispositions which God most loves. What, then, 
are they who are not of the Church, who do not receive 
the Sacraments from those who can alone give them their 
virtue ? Surely they are aliens from God, they cannot 
claim his covenanted mercies ; and the goodness which 
may be apparent in them, may not be real goodness ; 
God may see that it is false, though to us it appears sin- 
cere ; but it is certain that they do not possess the only 
appointed means of salvation ; and therefore, we must 
consider their state as dangerous, although we may not 
venture to condemn them. 

I have not consciously misrepresented the system of Mr. 
Newman and his friends in a single particular ; I have 
not, to my knowledge, expressed any one of their tenets 
invidiously. An attentive reader may deduce, I think, all 
the subordinate points in their teaching from some one or 
more of the principles which I have given ; but I have not 
wilfully omitted any doctrine of importance. And, in 
every point, the opposition to what I may be allowed to 
call the protestantism of the nineteenth century is so 
manifest, that we cannot but feel that the peculiar 
character of the system is to be traced to what I have 
before noticed — the extreme antipathy of its founders to 
the spirit which they felt to be predominant in their own 
age and country. 

It is worth our while to observe this, because fear and 
passion are not the surest guides to truth, and the rule of 
contraries is not the rule of wisdom. Other men have 
been indignant against the peculiar evils of their own time, 
and from their strong impression of these have seemed to 
lose sight of its good points ; but Mr. Newman and his 



24 INTRODUCTION. 

friends appear to hate the nineteenth century for its own 
sake, and to proscribe all belonging to it, whether good or 
bad, simply because it does belong to it. — This diseased 
state of mind is well shown by the immediate occasion of 
the organization of their party. Mr. Perceval tells us 
that it was the Act for the dissolution of some of the Irish 
bishoprics, passed in 1833, which first made the authors 
of the Tracts resolve to commence their publication. Mr. 
Perceval himself cannot even now speak of that Act 
temperately; he calls it "a wanton act of sacrilege," "a 
monstrous act," "an outrage upon the Church ;" and his 
friends, it may be presumed, spoke of it at the time in 
language at least equally vehement. Now, I am not 
expressing any opinion upon the justice or expediency of 
that Act ; it was opposed by many good men, and its merits 
or demerits were fairly open to discussion ; but would 
any fair and sensible person speak of it with such extreme 
abhorrence as it excited in the minds of Mr. Perceval and 
his friends ? The Act deprived the Church of no portion 
of its property ; it simply ordered a different distribution 
of it, with the avowed object on the part of its framers of 
saving the Church from the odium and the danger of exact- 
ing Church Rates from the Roman Catholics. It did 
nothing more than what, according to the constitution of 
the Churches of England and Ireland, was beyond all 
question within its lawful authority to do. The King's 
supremacy and the sovereignty of Parliament may be good 
or bad, but they are undoubted facts in the constitution 
of the Church of England, and have been so for nearly 
three hundred years. I repeat that I am stating no 
opinion as to the merits of the Irish Church Act of 1833 ; 
I only contend, that no man of sound judgment would 
regard it as " a monstrous act," or as " a wanton sacrilege." 
It bore upon it no marks of flagrant tyranny : nor did it 



INTRODUCTION. 25 

restrain the worsliip of the Church, nor corrupt its faith, 
nor command or encourage anything injurious to men's 
souls in practice. Lutlier was indignant at the sale of 
indulgences ; and his horror at the selling Church pardons 
for money was, by God's blessing, the occasion of the 
Reformation. The occasion of the new counter-reforma- 
tion was the abolition of a certain number of bishoprics, 
that their revenues might be applied solely to church 
purposes ; and that the Church might so be saved from a 
scandal and a danger. The difference of the exciting 
cause of the two movements gives the measure of the 
difference between the Reformation of 1517, and the 
views and objects of Mr. Newman and his friends. 

There are states of nervous excitement, when the noise 
of a light footstep is distracting. In such a condition 
were the authors of the Tracts in 1833, and all their sub- 
sequent proceedings have shown that the disorder was still 
upon them. Beset by their horror of the nineteenth cen 
tury, they sought for something most opposite to it, and 
therefore they turned to what they called Christian 
antiquity. Had they judged of their own times fairly, 
had they appreciated the good of the nineteenth century 
as well as its evil, they would have looked for their 
remedy not to the second or third or fourth centuries, but 
the first ; they would have tried to restore, not the Church 
of Cyprian, or Athanasius, or Augustine, but the Church 
of St. Paul and of St. John. Now, this it is most certain 
that they have not done. Their appeal has been not to 
Scripture, but to the opinions and practices of the domi- 
nant party in the ancient Charch. They have endea- 
voured to set those opinions and practices, under the 
name of apostolical tradition, on a level with the authority 
of the Scriptures. But their unfortunate excitement has 
made them fail of doing even what they intended to do. 
3 



ZO INTRODUCTION. 

It may be true that all their doctrines may be found in 
the writings of those whom they call the Fathers; but the 
elTect of their teaching is diiferent because its proportions 
are altered. Along with their doctrines, there are other 
points and another spirit prominent in the writings of the 
earlier Christians, which give to the whole a different 
complexion. The Tracts for the Times do not appear to 
me to represent faithfully the language of Christian 
antiquity ; they are rather its caricature. 

Still more is this the case, when we compare the 
language of Mr. Newman and his friends with that of the 
great divines of the Church of England. Granting that 
many of these believed firmly in apostolical succession ; 
that one or two may have held general councils to be in- 
fallible ; that some, provoked by the extravagances of the 
puritans, have spoken over-strongly about the authority 
of tradition : yet the whole works even of those who 
agree with Mr. Ne^vman in these points, give a view of 
Christianity difierent from that of the Tracts, because 
these points, w^hich in the Tracts stand forward without 
relief, are in our old divines tempered by the admixture 
of other doctrines, which, without contradicting them, do 
in fact alter their effect. This applies most strongly, 
perhaps, to Hooker and Taylor; but it holds good also 
of Bull and Pearson. Pearson's exposition of the article 
in the Creed relating to the Holy Catholic Church is very 
different from the language of Mr. Newman : it is such 
as, with perhaps one single exception, might be subscribed 
by a man who did not believe in apostolical succession.^ 

^ The sixth and last mark \vhich he gives of the unity of the 
Church is, "the unity of discipline and government/' "All the 
Churches of God have the same pastoral guides appointed, autho- 
rized, sanctified, and set apart by the appointment of God, by the 
direction of the Spirit, to direct lind lead the people of God in the 



INTRODUCTION. 27 

Again, Pearson is so far from making the creeds an inde- 
pendent authority, co-ordinate with Scriptm'c, that he de- 
clares, contrary, I suppose, to all probability, that the 
Apostles' Creed itself was but a deduction from our pre- 
sent Scriptures of the New Testament.^ Undoubtedly 
the divines of the seventeenth century are more in agree- 
ment with the Tracts than the Reformers are ; but it is 
by no means true that this agreement is universal. There 
is but one set of writers whose minds are exactly repre- 
sented by Mr. Newman and his friends, and these are the 
nonjurors. 

same way of eternal salvation ; as, therefore, there is no Church 
where there is no order, no ministry, so where the same order and 
ministry is, there is the same Church. And this is the unity of 
regiment and discipline/' Pearson on the Creed, Art. IX. p. 341, 
seventh edit. fol. 1701. It would be easy to put a construction upon 
this paragraph which I could agree with ; but I suppose that Pear- 
son meant what I hold to be an error. Yet how gently and generally 
is it expressed; and this doubtful paragraph stands alone amidst 
seventeen folio pages on the article of the Holy Catholic Church. 
And in bis conclusion, where he delivers what "every one ought to 
intend when they profess to believe the Holy Catholic Church,-' 
there is not a word about its government ; nor is Pearson one of 
those interpreters who pervert the perfectly certain meaning of the 
word " Catholic" to favour their own notions about episcopacy. I 
could cordially subscribe to every word of this conclusion. 

^ "To believe, therefore, as the word stands in the front of the 
Creed, ... is to ass^-at to the whole and every part of it as to a cer- 
tain and infallible truth revealed by God, . . . and delivered unto us 
in the writings of the blessed apostles and prophets immediately in- 
spired, moved, and acted by God, out of whose writings this brief 
sum of necessary points of f^iith was first collected." (P. 12.) And 
in the para^'raph immediately preceding, Pearson had said, "The 
household of God is built upon the foundation of the apostles and 
prophets, who are continued unto us only in their writings, and by 
them alone convey unto us the truths which they received from God, 
upon whose testimony we believe." It appears, therefere, that 
Pearson not only subscribed the Gth Article of the Church of 
Eno-land, but also believed it. 



28 INTKUDUOTIUN. 

Many reasons, therefore, concur to make it doubtful 
whether the authors of the Tracts have discovered the true 
remedy for the evils of their age ; whether they have 
really inculcated " something better and deeper than satis- 
fied the last century." The violent prejudice which pre- 
viously possessed them, and the strong feelings of passion 
and fear which led immediately to their first systematic 
publications, must in the first instance awaken a suspicion 
as to their wisdom ; and this suspicion becomes stronger 
when we find their writings different from the best of those 
which they profess to admire, and bearing a close resem- 
blance only to those of the nonjurors. A third considera- 
tion is also of much weight — that their doctrines do not 
enforce any great points of moral or spiritual perfection 
which other Christians had neglected ; nor do they, in any 
especial manner, "preach Christ." In this they offer a 
striking contrast to the religious movement, if I may so 
call it, which began some years since in the University at 
Cambridge. That movement, whatever human alloy 
might have mingled with it, bore on it most clear evidence 
that it was in the main God's work. It called upon men 
to turn from sin and be reconciled to God ; it emphatically 
preached Christ crucified. But Mr. Newman and his 
friends have preached as their peculiar doctrine, not Christ 
but the Church ; we must go even farther and say, not the 
Church, but themselves. What they teach has no moral 
or spiritual excellence in itself; but it tends greatly to 
their own exaltation. They exalt the sacraments highly, 
but all that they say of their virtue, all their admiration 
of them as so setting forth the excellence of faith, inas- 
much as in them the whole work is of God, and man has 
only to receive and believe, would be quite as true, and 
quite as well-grounded, if they were to abandon altogether 
that doctrine which it is their avowed object especially to 



IXTRODUCTION. 29 

enforce — the doctrine of apostolical succession. Referring 
again to the preamble of their original resolutions, already 
quoted, we see that the two first articles alone relate to 
our Lord and to his Sacraments ; the third, which is the 
great basis of their system, relates only to the Clergy. 
Doubtless, if apostolical succession be God's will, it is .our 
duty to receive it and to teach it ; but a number of clergy- 
men, claiming themselves to have this succession, and in- 
sisting that, without it, neither Christ nor Christ's Sacra- 
ments will save us, do, beyond all contradiction, preach 
themselves, and magnify their own importance. They are 
quite right in doing so, if God has commanded it ; but 
such preaching has no manifest warrant of God in it ; if 
it be according to God, it stands alone amongst his dis- 
pensations ; his prophets and his apostles had a diiferent 
commission. "We preach," said St. Paul, "not our- 
selves, but Christ Jesus the Lord ; and ourselves your 
servants for Jesus' sake." It is certain that the enforcing 
apostolical succession as the great object of our teaching 
is precisely to do that very thing which St. Paul was com- 
missioned not to do. 

This, to my mind, affords a very great presumption that 
the peculiar doctrines of Mr. Newman and his friends, 
those w^hich they make it their professed business to incul- 
cate, are not of God. I am anxious not to be misunder- 
stood in saying this. Mr. Newman and his friends preach 
many doctrines w^hich are entirely oF God ; as Christians, 
as ministers of Christ's Church, they preach God's word ; 
and thus, a very large portion of their teaching is of God, 
blessed both to their hearers and to themselves. Nay, 
even amongst the particular objects to which their own 
"Resolutions" pledge them, one is indeed most excellent — 
"the revival of daily common prayer, and more frequent 
participation of the Lord's Supper." This is their merit, 



30 IXTRODUCTION. 

not as Christians generally, but as a party, (I use tlie -^ord 
in no offensive sense ;) in this respect their efforts have 
done, and are doing great good. But they have them- 
selves declared that they will especially set themselves to 
preach apostolical succession ; and it is vrith reference to 
this, that I charge them with "preaching themselves;" it 
was of this I spoke, when I said that there was a very 
great presumption that their peculiar doctrines were not 
of God. 

Again, the system which they hold up as " better and 
deeper than satisfied the last century" is a remedy which 
has been tried once already : and its failure was so 
palpable, that all the evil of the eighteenth century was 
but the reaction from that enormous evil which this 
remedy, if it be one, had at any rate been powerless to 
cure. Apostolical succession, the dignity of the Clergy, 
the authority of the Church, were triumphantly maintained 
for several centuries ; and their full development was coin- 
cident, to say the least, with the corruption alike of 
Christ's religion and Christ's Church. So far were they 
from tending to realize the promises of prophecy, to 
perfect Christ's body up to the measure of the stature of 
Christ's own fulness, that Christ's Church declined during 
their ascendancy more and more; — she fell alike from 
truth and from holiness ; and these doctrines, if they did 
not cause the evil, were at least quite unable to restrain 
it. For, in whatever points the fifteenth century differed 
from the foui'th, it cannot be said that it upheld the apos- 
tolical succession less peremptorily, or attached a less 
value to Church tradition, and Church authority. I am 
greatly understating the case, but I am content for the 
present to do so : I will not say that Mr. Newman's 
favourite doctrines were the very Antichrist which cor- 
rupted Christianity; I will only say that they did not 



\ 



IXTRODUCTIOX. ol 

prevent its corruption, — tliat when tliey were most 
exalted^ christian truth and christian goodness were most 
depressed. 

After all, however, what has failed once may doubtless 
be successful on a second trial : it is within possibility, 
perhaps, that a doctrine, although destitute of all 
internal evidence showing it to come from God, may 
be divine notwithstanding ; — revealed for some purposes 
which we cannot fathom, or simply as an exercise of our 
obedience. All this may be so ; and if it can be shown to 
be so, there remains no other course than to believe God's 
word, and obey his commandments ; only the strength of 
the external evidence must be in proportion to the weak- 
ness of the internal. A good man would ask for no sign 
from heaven to assure him that God commands judgment, 
mercy, and truth ; whatsoever things are pure, and lovely, 
and of good report, bear in themselves the seal of their 
origin ; a seal which to doubt were blasphemy. But the 
cloud and the Ii2:htnin2;s and thunders, and all the sisins 
and wonders wrought in Egypt and in the Red Sea, were 
justly required to give divine authority to mere positive 
ordinances, in which, without such external warrant, none 
could have reco2:nised the voice of God. We ask of Mr. 
Newman and his friends to bring some warrant of Scrip- 
ture for that which they declare to be God's will. They 
speak very positively and say, that " the security by our 
Lord no less expressly authorized for the continuance and 
due application of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, is 
the apostolical commission of the bishops, and under them 
the presbyters of the Church." They say that oui* Lord 
has authorized this "no less expressly" than he has author- 
ized the Holy Supper as the mean of partaking in his 
body and blood. What our Lord has said concerning the 
communion is not truly represented : he instituted it as 



32 INTRODUCTION. 

one mean of grace among many ; not as the mean ; neither 
the sole mean, nor the prmclpal. But allow, for an 
instant, that it was instituted as the mean ; and give this 
sense to those well-known and ever-memorable words in 
which our Lord commanded his disciples to eat the bread 
and drink of the cup, in remembrance of him. His words 
commanding us to do this are express; "not less express," 
we are told, is his " sanction of the apostolical commission 
of the bishops, as the security for the continuance and due 
application of the Sacrament." Surely these writers 
allow themselves to pervert language so habitually, that 
they do not consider when, and with regard to whom, they 
are doing it. They say that our Lord has sanctioned the 
necessity of apostolical succession, in order to secure the 
continuance and efficacy of the sacrament, "no less 
expressly" than he instituted the sacrament itself. If 
they had merely asserted that he had sanctioned the 
necessity of apostolical succession, we might have sup- 
posed that, by some interpretation of their own, they 
implied his sanction of it, from words which, to other men, 
bore no such meaning. But in saying that he has 
"- expressly sanctioned it," they have, most unconsciously, 
I trust, ascribed their own words to our Lord ; they make 
him to say what he has not said, unless they can produce ^ 

^ " Scripture alone contains what remains to us of our Lord's 
teaching. If there "be a portion of revelation sacred beyond other 
portions, distinct and remote in its nature from the rest, it must be 
the words and works of the eternal Son Incarnate. lie is the ono 
Prophet of the Church, as he is our one Priest and King. Ilis his- 
tory is as f\ir above any other possible revelation, as heaven is above 
earth : for in it we have literally the sight of Almighty God in his 
judgments, thoughts, attributes, and deeds, and his mode of dealing 
with us his creatures. Now, this special revelation is in Scripture, 
and in Scripture only: tradition has no part in it." — Keioman's 
Lectures on the Frojphciical Office of the Church. 1837. Pp. 347, 
348. 



INTKODUOTION. 33 

some otlier credible record of his words besides the books 
of the four evangelists and the apostolical epistles. 

That their statement was untrue, and being untrue, that 
it is a most grave matter to speak untruly of our Lord's 
commands, are points absolutely certain. But if they re- 
call the assertion, as to the expressness of our Lord's 
sanction, and mean to say, that his sanction is implied, 
and may be reasonably deduced from what he has said, 
then I answer, that the deduction ought to be clear, 
because the doctrine in itself bears on it no marks of 
having had Christ for its author. Yet so far is it from 
true, that the necessity of apostolical succession, in order 
to give efficacy to the sacrament, may be clearly deduced 
from any recorded words of our Lord, that there are no 
words ^ of his from which it can be deduced, either pro- 

^ Since this was written, I have found out, what certainly it was 
impossible to anticipate beforehand, that our Lord's words, " Do this 
in remembrance of me," are supposed to teach the doctrine of the 
priest's consecrating power. But the passage to which I refer is so 
remarkable that I must quote it in its author's own words. Mr. 
Newman, for the tract is apparently one of his, observes, that three 
out of the four Gospels make no mention of the raising of Lazarus. 
He then goes on, "As the raising of Lazarus is true, though not 
contained at all in the first three Gospels ; so the gift of consecra- 
ting the Eucharist may have been committed by Christ to the priest- 
hood, though only indirectly taught in any of the four. Will you 
say I am arguing against our own Church, which says the Scripture 
'contains all things necessary to be believed to salvation?' Doubt- 
loss, Scripture contains all things necessary to be believed ; but there 
may be things contained which are not on the surface, and things 
which belong to the ritual, and not to belief. Points of ftiith may 
lie under the surface : points of observance need not be in Scripture 
at all. The consecrating power is a point of ritual, yet it is indi- 
rectly taught in Scripture, though not brought out, when Christ 
said, 'Do this,' for he spake to the apostles, who were priests, not to 
his disciples generally." — Tracts for the Times. Tract 85, p. 4G. 

This passage is indeed characteristic of the moral and intellectual 



34 INTRODUCTION. 

bably or plausibly ; none with wliicli it has any, the 
faintest, connexion; none from which it could be even 
conjectured that such a tenet had ever been in existence. 

fiiults which I have alluded to as marking the writings of the sup- 
porters of Mr. Newman's system. But what is become of the asser- 
tion, that this security of the apostolical commission was " expressly 
authorized" by our Lord, when it is admitted that it is only indirectly 
taught in Scripture ? And what becomes of the notion, that what 
our Lord did or instituted may be learned from another source than 
Scripture, when Mr. Newman has most truly stated, in the passage 
quoted in the preceding note, that our Lord's history, the history of 
his words and works, " is in Scripture, and Scripture only: tradition 
has no part in it?" I pass over the surprising state of mind which 
could imagine a distinction between things necessary to be believed, 
and necessary to be done; and could conceive such a distinction to 
be according to the meaning of our article. It would appear that 
this shift has been since abandoned, and others, no way less extra- 
ordinary, have been attempted in its place ; for an extraordinary 
process it must be which tries to reconcile Mr. Newman's opinions 
with the declaration of the sixth article. But now for Mr. Newman's 
scriptural proof, that our Lord " committed to the priesthood the gift 
of consecrating the Eucharist." " Vv^hen Christ said, * Do this,' he 
spake to the apostles, who were priests, not to his disciples gene- 
rally." This would prove too much, for it would prove that none 
but the clergy were ordered to receive the communion at all : the 
words, "Do this," referring, not to any consecration, of which there 
had been no word said, but to the eating the bread, and drinking of 
the cup. Again, when St. Paul says, "the cup which we bless,' — 
" the bread which we break," it is certain that the word " we," does 
cot refer to himself and Sosthenes, or to himself and Barnabas, but 
to himself and the whole Corinthian church ; for he immediately 
goes on, "for we, the whole number of us," {ol Tioxxoi, compare 
Komans xii. 5,) "are one body, for we all are partakers of the one 
bread." Thirdly, Tertullian expressly contrasts the original institu- 
tion of our Lord with the church practice of his own day, in this 
very point. " Eucharistia3 sacramentum et in tempore victus, et 
omnibus mandatum a Domino, etiam antelucanis coetibus ncc do 
aliorum manu quam prceridentium sumimus." {De Corona Militis, 
3.) I knoAV that Tertullian believes the alteration to have been 
founded upon an apostolical tradition ; but he no less names it as a 



INTRODUCTION. 35 

I am not speaking, it will be observed, of apostolical suc- 
cession simply ; but of the necessity of apostolical succes- 
sion, as a security for the efficacy of the sacrament. That 
this doctrine comes from God, is a position altogether 
■without evidence, probability, or presumption, either 
internal or external. 

On the whole, then, the movement in the church, 
excited by Mr. Newman and his friends, appears to be 
made in a false direction, and to be incapable of satisfying 
the feeling which prompted it. I have not noticed other 
presumptions ageinst it, arising from the consequences to 
which the original doctrines of the party have since led, 
or from certain moral and intellectual faults which have 
marked the writings of its supporters. It is enough to 
say, that the movement originated in minds highly pre- 
judiced before-hand, and under the immediate influence 
of passion and fear ; that its doctrines, as a whole, 
resemble the teaching of no set of writers entitled to 
respect, either in the early church, or in our own ; that 
they tend, not to Christ's glory, or to the advancement of 
holiness, but simply to the exaltation of the clergy ; and 
that they are totally unsupported by the authority of Scrip- 
ture. They are a plant, therefore, which our heavenly 
Father has not planted ; a speaking in the name of the 
Lord what the Lord has not commanded ; hay and stubble, 

change from the original institution of our Lord ; nor does he appear 
to consider it as more than a point of order. Lastly, what shadow 
of probability is there, and is it not begging the whole question, to 
assume that our Lord spoke to his apostles as priests, and not as re- 
presentatives of the whole christian church ? Ilis language makes 
no distinction between his disciples and those who were without ; it 
repels it as dividing his disciples from each other. Ilis twelve dis- 
ciples were the apostles of the church, but they were not priests. In 
such matters our Lord's words apply exactly, "One is your Master, 
even Christ, and all ye are brethren.^' 



36 INTRODUCTION. 

built upon the foundation of Christ, which arc good for 
nothinc; but to be burned. 

I have spoken quite confidently of the total absence 
of all support in Scripture for Mr. Newman's favourite 
doctrine of "the necessity of apostolical succession, in 
order to ensure the effect of the sacraments." This doc- 
trine is very different from that of the Divine appointment 
of episcopacy as a form of government, or even from that 
of the exclusive lawfulness of that episcopacy which has 
come down by succession from the apostles. Much less is 
it to be confounded with any notions, how^ever exalted, of 
the efficacy of the sacraments, even though carried to such 
a length as we read of in the early church, when living 
men had themselves baptized as proxies for the dead, and 
when a portion of the v/ine of the communion was placed 
by the side of a corpse in the grave. Such notions may be 
superstitious and unscriptural, as indeed they are, but 
they are quite distinct from a belief in the necessity of a 
human priest to give the sacraments their virtue. And, 
without going to such lengths as this, men may over- 
estimate the efficacy of the sacraments, to the disparage- 
ment of prayer, and preaching, and reading the Scriptures, 
and yet may be perfectly clear from the opinion which 
makes this efficacy depend immediately on a human 
administrator. And so again, men may hold episcopacy 
to be divine, and the episcopacy of apostolical succession 
to be the only true episcopacy, but yet they may utterly 
reject the notion of its being essential to the efficacy of 
the sacraments. It is of this last doctrine only that I 
assert, in the strongest terms, that it is w^holly without 
support in Scripture, direct or indirect, and that it does 
not minister to godliness. 

In truth, Mr. Newman and his friends are well aware 
that the Scripture will not support their doctrine, and 



INTRODUCTION. 37 

therefore it is that they have proceeded to such lengths in 
upholding the authority not of the creeds only, but of the 
opinions and practices of the ancient church generally ; 
and that they try to explain away the clear language of 
our article, that nothing " Avliich is neither read therein 
(i. c. in holy Scripture,) nor may be proved thereby, is to 
be required of any man that it should be believed as an 
article of faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to sal- 
vation." It would be one of the most unaccountable 
phenomena of the human mind, were any man fairly to 
come to the conclusion that the Scriptures and the early 
church were of equal authority, and that the authority of 
both were truly divine. If any men resolve to maintain 
doctrines and practices as of divine authority, for which 
the Scripture offers no countenance, they of course are 
driven to maintain the authority of the church in their own 
defence ; and where they have an interest in holding any 
particular epinion, its falsehood, however palpable, is 
unhappily no bar to its reception. Otherwise it would 
seem that the natural result of believing the early church 
to be of equal authority with the Scripture, would be to 
deny the inspiration of either. For two things so different 
in several points as the Christianity of the Scriptures 
and that of the early church, may conceivably be both 
false, but it is hard to think that they can both be perfectly 
true. 

I am here, however, allowing, what is by no means true, 
without many qualifications, that Mr. Newman's system is 
that of the early church. The historical inquiry as to the 
doctrines of the early church would lead me into far too 
wide a field; I may only notice, in passing, how many 
points require to be carefully defined in conducting such 
an inquiry ; as, for instance, what we mean by the term 
" early church," as to time ; for that may be fully true of 
4 



38 INTRODUCTION. 

the cliurcli in tlie fourth century, -^vhich is only partially 
true of it in the third, and only in a very slight degree 
true of it in the second or first. And again, what do "we 
mean by the term "early church," as to persons; for 
a few eminent writers are not even the whole clergy; 
neither is it by any means to be taken on their authority 
that their views were really those of all the bishops and 
presbyters of the Christian world ; but if they were, the 
clergy are not the church, nor can their judgments be 
morally considered as the voice of the church, even if we 
were to admit that they could at any time constitute its 
voice legally. But, for my present purpose, we may take 
for granted that Mr. Newman's system as to the pre-emi- 
nence of the sacraments, and the necessity of apostolical 
succession to give them their efficacy, was the doctrine of 
the early church ; then I say that this system is so diffe- 
rent from that of the New Testament, that to invest the 
two with equal authority is not to make the church system 
divine, but to make the scriptural system human ; or, at 
the best, perishable and temporary, like the ceremonial 
law of Moses. Either the church system must be sup- 
posed to have superseded the scriptural system,^ and its 

^ This, it is well known, has been most ably maintained by 
Rothe, [Anfdnge der Christlichen Kirche und Hirer Verjassung, 
Wittenberg, 1837,) with respect to the origin of episcopacy. He 
contends that it was instituted by the surviving apostles after the 
destruction of Jerusalem, as an intentional change from the earlier 
constitution of the church, in order to enable it to meet the peculiar 
difficulties and dangers of the times. To this belongs the question 
of the meaning of the expression, ol taX; Sevtipac^ tujv 'ArtoatoTMv 
diatd^foc 7iapaxo7.ovOr^x6ts;, in the famous Fragments of Irenseus, pub- 
lished by PfafF, from a manuscript in the library of Turin, and to 
be found in the Venice edition of Irenceus, 1734, vol. ii. Fragmento- 
rinn, p. 10. But then llothe would admit that if the apostles 
altered what they themselves had appointed, it would follow that 
neither their earlier nor their later institutions were intended to bo 



INTRODUCTION. 30 

unknown autliors are the real apostles of our present 
faith, in which case, we do not see why it should not be 
superseded in its turn, and why the perfect manifestation 
of Christianity should not be found in the Koran, or in 
any still later system ; or else neither of the two systems 
can be divine, but the one is merely the human production 
of the first century, the other that of the second and 
third. If this be so, it is clearly open to all succeeding 
centuries to adopt whichever of the two they choose, or 
neither. 

To such consequences are those driven who maintain 
the divine authority of the system of Mr. Newman. 
Assuredly the thirst for "something deeper and truer 
than satisfied the last century," will not be allayed by a 
draught so scanty and so vapid; but after the mirage has 
beguiled and disappointed him for a season, the traveller 
presses on the more eagerly to the true and living well. 

In truth, the evils of the last century were but the in- 
evitable fruits of the long ascendency of Mr. Newman's 
favourite principles. Christ's religion had been corrupted 
in the long period before the Reformation, but it had ever 
retained many of its main truths, and it was easy, when 
the appeal was once made to Scripture, to sweep away 

for all times and all places, but were simply adapted to a particular 
state of circumstances, and were alterable when that state was 
altered : in short, whatever institutions the apostles changed were 
shown to be essentially changeable ; otherwise their early institu- 
tion was defective, which cannot be conceived. And thus it may 
well be that the early church may have altered, in some points, the 
first institutions of the apostles, and may have been guided by 
God's Spirit in doing so ; but the error consists in believing that the 
new institutions were to be of necessity more permanent than those 
which they succeeded ; in supposing that either the one or the other 
belong to the eternal truths and laws of Christ's religion, when they 
belong, in fact, to the essentially changeable regulations of his 
church. 



40 IXTPvODUCTION. 

the corruptions, and restore it in its perfect form; but 
Christ's church had been destroyed so long and so com- 
pletely, that its very idea was all but lost, and to revive it 
actually Avas impossible. What had been known under 
that name, — I am speaking of Christ's church, be it ob- 
served, as distinguished from Christ's religion, — was so 
great an evil, that, hopeless of drawing any good from it, 
men looked rather to Christ's religion as all in all ; and 
content with having destroyed the false church, never 
thought that the scheme of Christianity could not be per- 
fectly developed without the restoration of the true one. 
But the want was deeply felt, and its consequences were 
deplorable. At this moment men are truly craving some- 
thing deeper than satisfied the last century ; they crave to 
have the true church of Christ, which the last century 
was without. Mr. Newman perceives their want, and 
again offers them that false church which is worse than 
none at all. 

The truths of the Christian religion are to be sougkt for 
in the Scripture alone ; they are the same at all times and 
in all countries. With the Christian church it is other- 
wise ; the church is not a revelation concerning the un- 
changeable and eternal God, but an institution to enable 
changeable man to apprehend the unchangeable. Because 
man is changeable, the church is also changeable ; change- 
able, not in its object, which is for ever one and the same, 
but in its means for effecting that object ; changeable in 
its details, because the same treatment cannot suit various 
diseases, various climates, various constitutional peculiari- 
ties, various external influences. 

The Scripture, then, which is the sole and direct 
authority for all the truths of the Christian religion, is 
not in the sam.e way, an authority for the constitution and 
rules of the Christian church; that is, it does not furnish 



INTRODUCTION. 41 

direct autlioritv, but guides us only by analogy : or it 
gives us merely certain main principles, wliicli lye must 
apply to our own various circumstances. This is shown 
by the remarkable fact, that neither our Lord nor his 
apostles have left any commands with respect to the con- 
stitution and administration of the church generally. 
Commands in abundance they have left us on moral 
matters ; and one commandment of another kind has been 
added, the commandment, namely, to celebrate the 
Lord's Supper. "Do this in remembrance of me," are 
our Lord's words; and St. Paul tells us, if we could other- / / 
wise have doubted it, that this remembrance is to be kept ■ 
up for ever." "As often as ye eat that bread or drink / 
that cup ye do show the Lord's death till he come.'" This " 
is the one perpetual ordinance of the Christian church, 
and this is commanded to be kept perpetually. But its 
other institutions are mentioned historically, as things 
done once, but not necessarily to be always repeated : nay, 
they are mentioned without any details, so that we do not 
always know what their exact form was in their original 
state, and cannot, therefore, if we would, adopt it as a 
perpetual model. Nor is it unimportant to observe that 
institutions are recorded as having been created on the 
spur of the occasion, if I may so speak, not as havino* 
formed a part of an original and universal plan. A great 
change in the character of the deacon, or subordinate 
minister's office, is introduced in consequence of the com- 
plaints of the Hellenist Christians : the number of the 
apostles is increased by the addition of Paul and Barna- 
bas, not appointed, as Matthias had been, by the other 
apostles themselves, but by the prophets and teachers of 
the church of Antioch. Again, the churches founded by 
St. Paul were each, at first, placed by him under the 
government of several presbyters ; but after his imprisou- 
4* 



42 INTRODUCTION. 

ment at Eome, finding that they were become greatly cor- 
rupted, he sends out single persons, in two instances, with 
full powers to remodel these churches, and with authority 
to correct the presbyters themselves: yet it does not 
appear that these especial ^ visitors were to alter perma- 
nently the earlier constitution of the churches ; nor that 
they were sent generally to all the churches which St. 
Paul had founded. Indeed, it appears evident from the 
epistle of Clement, that the original constitution of the 
church of Corinth still subsisted in his time ; the govern- 
ment was still vested not in one man, but in many.^ Yet 

^ The command, '•' to appoint elders in every city," is given to 
Titus, according to Paul's practice when he first formed churches of 
the Gentiles (Acts xiv. 2.) Xor did Timothy, or Titus, remain per- 
manently at Epbesus, or in Crete. Timothy, when St. Paul's second 
Epistle was written to him, was certainly not at Ephesus, but appa- 
rently in Pontus ; and Titus, at the same period, was gone to Dal- 
matia : nor indeed was he to remain in Crete beyond the summer of 
the year in which St. Paul's Epistle was written ; he was to meet 
Paul, in the winter, at Nicopolis. 

^ Only elders are spoken of as governing the church of Corinth. It 
is impossible to understand clearly the nature of the contest, and of 
the party against which Clement's Epistle is directed. Where he 
wishes the heads of that party to say, si 81 bus atdoig xai Ipi^ %a.l 
GXiSixata, ixxLopui, artsiui ov iav ^ov%r^QBs, xai rtocu) ta rCpoGtasaoiufva vnb 
tov Tfkr^Oovg, c. 54, it would seem as if they had been endeavouring to 
exercise a despotic authority over the church, in defiance of the 
general feeling, as well as of the existing government, like those 
earlier persons at Corinth, whom St. Paul describes, in his second 
Epistle, xi. 20 ; and like Diotrephes, mentioned by St. John, 3 Epist. 
9, 10. But in a society where all power must have depended on the 
consent of those subject to it, how could any one exercise a tyranny 
against the will of the majority, as well as against the authority of 
the Apostles ? And ra rtpoora^yaojUf va vrto tov rfkriOov^ must signify, I 
think, " the bidding of the society at large." Compare for this use 
of 7t%r9og, Ignatius, Smyrna. 8 ; Trallian. 1, 8. A conjecture might 
be offered as to the solution of this difficulty, but it would lead me 
into too long a discussion. 



INTRODUCTION. 43 

a few years later the government of a single man, as "we 
sec from Ignatius, was become very general ; and Igna- 
tius, as is well known, w^islies to invest it witli absolute 
power. ^ I believe that he acted quite wisely according to 
the circumstances of the church at that period ; and that 
nothing less than a vigorous unity of government could 
have struggled with the difficulties and dangers of that 
crisis. But no man can doubt that the system which 
Ignatius so earnestly recommends was very different from 
that -which St. Paul had instituted fifty or sixty years 
earlier. 

On two points, however, — points not of detail, but of 
principle, — the Scripture does seem to speak decisively. 
1st. The whole body of the church was to take an active 
share in its concerns ; the various faculties of its various 
members were to perform their several parts : it was to be 
a living society, not an inert mass of mere hearers and 
subjects, who were to be authoritatively taught and abso- 
lutely ruled b)y one small portion of its members. It is 
quite consistent with this, that, at particular times, the 
church should centre all its own power and activity in the 
persons of its rulers. In the field, the imperium of the 
Roman consul was unlimited ; and even within the city 
■walls, the senate's commission in times of imminent 
danger, released him from all restraints of law ; the whole 
power of the state was, for the moment, his, and his only. 
Such temporary despotisms are sometimes not expedient 
merely, but necessary : without them society would 
perish. I do not, therefore, regard Ignatius's epistles as 
really contradictory to the idea of the church conveyed to 



1 Insomuch that he ^vished all marriages to be solemnized with the 
consent and approbation of the bishop, fista yvJour^ rov frttazo-rcv 
that they might be "according to God, and not according to 
passion ;" xata, Qbov xai fivi xat' B:iL9ifMiav. — Ad Polycarp. 5. 



44 INTRODUCTION. 

US in tlie twelfth chapter of St. Paul's First Epistle to the 
Corinthians : I believe that the dictatorship, so to speak, 
which Ignatius claims for the bishop in each church, was 
required by the circumstances of the case ; but to change 
the temporary into the perpetual dictatorship, was to sub- 
vert the Roman constitution; and to make Ignatius's 
language the rule, instead of the exception, is no less to 
subvert the Christian church. Wherever the language of 
Ignatius is repeated with justice, there the church must 
either be in its infancy, or in its dotage, or in some extra- 
ordinary crisis of danger ; wherever it is repeated, as of 
universal application, it destroys, as in fact it has de- 
stroyed, the very life of Christ's institution. 

But, 2d, the Christian church was absolutely and 
entirely, at all times, and in all places, to be without a 
human priesthood. Despotic government and priesthood 
are things perfectly distinct from one another. Despotic 
government might be required, from time to time, by this 
or that portion of the Christian church, as by other 
societies ; for government is essentially changeable, and 
all forms, in the manifold varieties of the condition of 
society, are, in their turn, lawful and beneficial. But a 
priesthood belongs to a matter not so varying — the rela- 
tions subsisting between God and and man. These 
relations w^ere fixed for the Christian church from its very 
foundation, being, in fact, no other than the main truths 
of the Christian religion ; and they bar, for all time, the 
very notion of an earthly priesthood. They bar it, 
because they establish the everlasting priesthood of our 
Lord, which leaves no place for any other ; they bar it, 
because priesthood is essentially mediation ; and they 
establish one Mediator between God and man — the Man 
Christ Jesus. And, therefore, the notion of Mr. Newman 
and his friends, that the sacraments derive their efficacy 



INTRODUCTION. 45 

from the apostolical succession of the minister, is so 
extremely unchristian, that it actually deserves to be 
ca;led anti-christian ; for there is no point of the priestly 
office, properly so called, in which the claim of the earthly 
priest is not absolutely precluded. Do we want him for 
sacrifice ? Nay, there is no place for him at all ; for our 
one atoning Sacrifice has been once ofi"ered ; and by its 
virtue we are enabled to ofi'er daily our spiritual sacrifices 
of ourselves, which no other man can by possibility ofi'er 
for us. Do we want him for intercession ? Nay, there is 
One who ever liveth to make intercession for us, through 
whom we have access to (-irpotraXw^'^v, admission to the 
presence of) the Father, and for whose sake, Paul, and 
Apollos, and Peter, and things present, and things to 
come, are all ours already. His claim can neither be 
advanced or received without high dishonour to our true 
Priest and to his blessed gospel. If circumcision could 
not be practised, as necessary, by a believer in Christ, 
without its involving a forfeiture of the benefits of 
Christ's salvation ; how much more does St. Paul's 
language apply to the invention of an earthly priest- 
hood — a priesthood neither after the order of Aaron, nor 
yet of Melchisedek ; unlawful alike under the law and the 
gospel. 

It is the invention of the human priesthood, which 
falling in, unhappily, with the absolute power rightfully 
vested in the Christian church during the troubles of the 
second century, fixed the exception as the rule, and so in 
the end destroyed the church. It pretended that the 
clergy were not simply rulers and teachers, — offices which 
necessarily vary according to the state of those who are 
ruled and taught, — but that they were essentially 
mediators between God and the church; and as this 
language would have sounded too profanely, — for the 



46 INTRODUCTION. 

mediator between God and the church can be none but 
Christ, — so the clergy began to draw to themselves the 
attributes of the church, and to call the church by a 
different name, such as the faithful, or the laity ; so that 
to speak of the church mediating for the people did not 
sound so shocking, and the doctrine so disguised found 
ready acceptance. Thus the evil work was consum- 
mated ; the great majority of the members of the church 
were virtually disfranchised ; the minority retained the 
name, but the character of the institution vras utterly 
corrupted. 

To revive Christ's church, therefore, is to expel the 
antichrist of priesthood, (which, as it was foretold of him, 
" as God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself 
that he is God,") and to restore its disfranchised members, 
— the laity, — to the discharge of their proper duties in 
it, and to the consciousness of their paramount import- 
ance. This is the point which I have dwelt upon in the 
XXXVIII"" Lecture, and which is closely in connection 
with the point maintained in the XL*^ ; and all who value 
the inestimable blessings of Christ's church should labour 
in arousing the laity to a sense of their great share in them. 
In particular, that discipline, which is one of the greatest 
of those blessings, never can, and, indeed, never ought to 
be restored, till the Church resumes its lawful authority, 
and puts an end to the usurpation of its powers by the 
clergy. There is a feeling now awakened amongst the lay 
members of our Church, which, if it can but be rightly 
directed, may, by God's blessing, really arrive at some- 
thing truer and deeper than satisfied the last century, or 
than satisfied the last seventeen centuries. Otherwise, 
whatever else may be improved, the laity will take care 
that church discipline shall continue to slumber, and they 
will best serve the church by doing so. Much may be 



INTRODUCTION. 47 

done to spread the knowledge of Ciirist's religion ; new 
churclies may be built ; new ministers appointed to preach 
the word and administer the sacraments ; those may hear 
who now cannot hear ; many more sick persons may be 
visited ; many more children may receive religious 
instruction : all this is good, and to be received with 
sincere thankfulness ; but, with a knowledge revealed to 
us of a still more excellent power in Christ's church, and 
with the abundant promises of prophecy in our hands, can 
we rest satisfied with the lesser and imperfect good, which 
strikes thrice and stays ? But, if the zeal of the lay mem- 
bers of our Church be directed by the principles of Mr. 
Newman, then the result will be, not merely a lesser good, 
but one fearfully mixed with evil — Christian religion pro- 
faned by antichristian fables, Christian holiness marred 
by superstition and uncharitableness ; Christian wisdom 
and Christian sincerity scofied at, reviled, and persecuted 
out of sight. This is declared to us by the sure voice of 
experience ; this was the fruit of the spirit of priestcraft, 
with its accompaniments of superstitious rites and lying 
traditions, in the last decline of the Jewish church ; this 
w^as the fruit of the same spirit, with the same accompani- 
ments, in the long decay of the Christian church ; although 
the indestructible virtue of Christ's gospel was manifest in 
the midst of the evil, and Christ, in every age and in 
every country, has been known with saving power by 
some of his people, and his church, in her worst corruptions, 
has taught many divinest truths, has inculcated many 
holiest virtues. 

When the tide is setting strongly against us, we can 
scarcely expect to make progress ; it is enough if we do 
not drift along with it. Mr. Newman's system is now at 
the flood ; it is daily making converts ; it is daily swelled 
by many of those who neither love it nor understand it in 



48 INTRODUCTION. 

itself, but wlio hope to make it serve their purposes, or 
who like to swim Avith the stream. A strong profession, 
therefore, of an opposite system must expect, at the 
present moment, to meet with little favour ; nor, indeed, 
have I any hope of turning the tide, which will flow for its 
appointed season, and its ebb does not seem to be at hand. 
But whilst the hurricane rages, those exposed to it may 
well encourage one another to hold fast their own founda- 
tions against it ; and many are exposed to it in whose 
welfare I naturally have the deepest interest, and in whom 
old impressions may be supposed to have still so much 
force that I may claim from them, at least, a patient 
hearing. I am anxious to show them that Mr. Newman's 
system is to be opposed not merely on negative grounds, 
as untrue, but as obstructing that perfect and positive 
truth, that perfection of Christ's church, which the last 
century, it may be, neglected, but which I value and 
desire as earnestly as it can be valued and desired by any 
man alive. My great objection to Mr. Newman's system 
is, that it destroys Christ's church, and sets up an evil in 
its stead. We do not desire merely to hinder the evil from 
occupying the ground, and to leave it empty; that has 
been, undoubtedly, the misfortune, and partly the fault of 
Protestantism ; but we desire to build on the holy ground 
a no less holy temple, not out of our own devices, 
but according to the teaching of Christ himself, who 
has given us the outline, and told us what should be its 
purposes. 

The true church of Christ would offer to every faculty 
of our nature its proper exercise, and would entirely meet 
all our wants. No wise man doubts that the Reformation 
was imperfect, or that in the Romish system there were 
many good institutions, and practices, and feelings, which 
it would be most desirable to restore amongst ourselves. 



INTRODUCTION. 49 

Daily churcli services, frequent communions, memorials of 
our Christian calling continually presented to our notice, 
in crosses and way-side oratories j//commemorations of 
holy men, of all times and countries ; the doctrine of the 
com-munion of saints practically taught ; religious orders, 
especially of women, of different kinds, and under 
different rules, delivered only from the snare and sin of 
perpetual vows ; all these, most of which are of some 
efficacy for good, even in a corrupt church, belong no less 
to the true church, and would there be purely beneficial. 
If Mr. Newman's system attracts good and thinking men, 
because it seems to promise them all these things, which 
in our actual Church are not to be found, let them re- 
member, that these things belong to the perfect church no 
less than to that of the Romanists and of Mr. Newman, 
and would flourish in the perfect church far more healthily. 
Or, again, if any man admires Mr. Newman's system for 
its austerities, if he regards fasting as a positive duty, he 
should consider that these might be transferred also to the 
perfect church, and that they have no necessary connexion 
with the peculiar tenets of Mr. Newman. We know that 
the Puritans were taunted by their adversaries for their 
frequent fasts, and the severity of their lives ; and they 
certainly were far enough from agreeing with Mr. Newman. 
Whatever there is of good, or self-denying, or ennobling, 
in his system, is altogether independent of his doctrine 
concerning the priesthood. It is that doctrine which is 
the peculiarity of his system and of Romanism ; it is that 
doctrine which constitutes the evil of both, which over- 
weighs all the good accidentally united with it, and makes 
the systems, as such, false and anti-christian. Nor can 
any human being find in this doctrine anything of a 
beneficial tendency either to his intellectual, his moral, or 
his spiritual nature. If mere reverence be a virtue, 
5 



50 INTRODU(?TION. 

without reference to its object, let us, by all means, do 
lionour to the virtue of those who fell, down to the stock of 
a tree ; and let us lament the harsh censure which charged 
them with "having a lie in their right hand.'* ' 

What does the true and perfect church want, that she 
should borrow from the broken cisterns of idolatry? 
Holding all those truths in which the clear voice of God's 
word is joined by the accordant confession of God's 
people in all ages ; holding all the means of grace of 
which she was designed to be the steward — her common 
prayers, her pure preaching, her uncorrupted sacraments, 
her free and living society, her wise and searching 
discipline, her commemorations and memorials of God's 
mercy and grace, whether shown in her Lord himself, or 
in his and her members ; — looking lovingly upon her 
elder sisters, the ancient churches, and delighting to be 
in communion with them, as she hopes that her younger 
sisters, the churches of later days, will delight to be in 
communion with her ; — what has she not, that Christ's 
bride should have ? what has she not, that Mr. Newman's 
system can give her ? But because she loves her Lord, 
and stands fast in his faith, and has been enlightened by 
his truth, she will endure no other mediator than Christ, 

^ The language which Mr. Nevrman and his friends have allowed 
themselves to hold, in admiration of what they call reverential and 
submissive faith, might certainly be used in defence of the lowest 
idolatry ; what they have dared to call rationalistic can plead such 
high and sacred authority in its favour, that if I w«re to quote 
some of the language of the " Tracts for the Times," and place by 
the side of it certain passages from the New Testament, Mr. 
Newman and his friends would appear to have been writing 
^blasphemy. It seems scarcely possible that they could have remem- 
bered what is said in St. Matthew xv. 9 — 20, and who said it, when 
they have called it rationalism to deny a spiritual virtue in things 
that are applied to the body. 



INTRODUCTION^. 51 

she will repose her trust only on his word, she will 
worship in the light, and will abhor the words, no less 
than the works, of darkness. Her sisters, the elder 
churches, she loves and respects as she would be herself 
loved and respected; but she will not, and may not, 
worship them, nor even, for their sakes, believe error to be 
truth, or foolishness to be wisdom. She dare not hope 
that she can be in all things a perfect guide and example 
to the churches that shall come after her ; as neither have 
the churches before her been in all things a perfect guide 
and example to herself. She would not impose her yoke 
upon future generations, nor will she submit her own neck 
to the yoke of antiquity. She honours all men, but makes 
none her idol ; and she would have her own individual 
members regard her with honour, but neither would she 
be an idol to them. She dreads especially that sin of 
which her Lord has so emphatically warned her — the sin 
against the Holy Ghost. She will neither lie against him 
by declaring that he is where his fruits are not manifested ; 
nor blaspheme him, by saying that he is not where his 
fruits are. Rites and ordinances may be vain, prophets 
may be false, miracles may be miracles of Satan ; but the 
signs of the Holy Spirit, truth and holiness, can never 
be ineffectual, can never deceive, can never be evil; 
where they are, and only where they are, there is God. 

There are states of falsehood and wickedness so mon- 
strous, that, to use the language of Eastern mythology, the 
Destroyer God is greater than the Creator or the Preserver, 
and no good can be conceived so great as the destruction 
of the existing evil. But ordinarily in human affairs de- 
struction and creation should go hand in hand ; as the ever- 
green shrubs of our gardens do not cast their old leaves till 
the young ones are ready to supply their place. Great as is 
the falsehood of Mr. Newman's system, it would be but an 



52 INTRODUCTION. 

unsatisfactory work to clear it away, if we had no positive 
truth to offer in its room. But the thousands of good men 
"whom it has beguiled, because it professed to meet the 
earnest craving of their minds for a restoration of Christ's 
church with power, need not fear to open their eyes to its 
hollowness ; like the false miracles of fraud or sorcery, it 
is but the counterfeit of a real truth. The restoration of 
the church, is, indeed, the best consummation of all our 
prayers, and all our labours ; it is not a dream, not a pros- 
pect to be seen only in the remotest distance ; it is possible, 
it lies very near us ; with God's blessing it is in the power 
of this very generation to begin and make some progress 
in the vrork. If the many good, and wise, and influential 
laymen of our Church would but awake to their true posi- 
tion and duties, and would labour heartily to procure for 
the church a living organization and an eflfective govern- 
ment, in both of which the laity should be essential mem- 
bers, then, indeed, the church would become a reality.^ 

^The famous saying, *• extra ecclesiam nulla salus," is, in its idea, 
a most divine truth ; historically and in fact it may be, and often 
has been, a practical falsehood. If the truths of Christ's religion 
were necessarily accessible only to the members of some visible 
church, then it would be true always, inasmuch as to be out of the 
church would then be the same thing as to be without Christ; and, 
as a society, the church ought so to attract to itself all goodness, and 
by its internal organization, so to encourage all goodness, that 
nothing would be without its pale but extreme wickedness, or extreme 
ignorance; and he who were voluntarily to forfeit its spiritual ad- 
vantages, would be guilty of moral suicide ; so St. Paul calls the 
church the pillar and ground of truth ; that is, it was so in its pur- 
pose and idea; and he therefore conjures Timothy to walk warily in 
it, and to take heed that what ought to be the pillar and ground of 
truth should not be profaned by fables, and so be changed into a 
pillar of falsehood. But to say universally, as an historical fact, 
that " extra ecclesiam nulla salus," may be often to utter one of the 
worst of falsehoods. A ferry is set up to transport men over an 
unfordable river, and it might be truly said that "extra navem nulla 
salus ;" there is no other safe way, speaking generally, of getting 



INTRODUCTION. 53 

This is not Erastianism, or rather, it is not what is com- 
monly cried down under that name ; it is not the subjection 
of the church to the state, which, indeed, would be a most 
miserable and most im christian condition ; but it would be 
the deliverance of the church, and its exaltation to its own 
proper sovereignty. The members of one particular 
profession are most fit to administer a system in part, most 
unfit to legislate for it or to govern it : we could ill spare 
the ability and learning of our lawyers, but we surely 
should not wish to have none but lawyers concerned even 
in the administration of justice, much less to have none 
but lawyers in the government or in parliament. What is 
true of lawyers with regard to the state, is no less true of 
the clergy with regard to the church ; indispensable as 
ministers and advisers, they cannot, without great mischief, 
act as sole judges, sole legislators, sole governors. And 
this is a truth so palpable, that the clergy, by pressing 
such a claim, merely deprive the church of its judicial, 
legislative, and executive functions ; whilst the common 
sense of the church will not allow them to exercise these 
powers, and, whilst they assert that no one else may 
exercise them, the result is, that they are not exercised at 
all, and the essence of the chui'ch is destroyed. 

The first step towards the restoration of the church 
seems to be the revival of the order of deacons ; which 
might be efi*ected without any other change in our present 
system than a repeal of all laws, canons, or customs which 
prohibit a deacon from following a secular calling, which 

over; but the ferryman has got the plague, and if you go in the boat 
with him, you will catch it and die. In despair, a man plunges into 
the water, and swims across ; would not the ferryman be guilty of a 
double falsehood who should call out to this man, '* extra navem nulla 
salus,'' insisting that he had not swum over, when he had, and saying 
that his boat would have carried him safely, whereas it would have 
killed him ? 



54 INTRODUCTION. 

confer on him any civil exemptions, or subject him to any 
civil disqualifications. The Ordination Service, with the 
subscription to the Articles, would remain perfectly 
unaltered ; and as no deacon can hold any benefice, it is 
manifest that the proposed measure would in no way 
interfere with the rights or duties of the order of presby- 
ters, or priests, which would remain precisely what they 
are at present. But the benefit in large towns would be 
enormous, if, instead of the present system of district visit- 
ing by private individuals, excellent as that is where there 
is nothing better, we could have a large body of deacons, 
the ordained ministers of the church, visiting the sick, 
managing charitable subscriptions, and sharing with their 
presbyter in those strictly clerical duties, which now, in 
many cases, are too much for the health and powers of the 
strongest. Yet a still greater advantage would be found 
in the link thus formed between the clergy and laity by 
the revival of an order appertaining in a manner to both. 
Nor would it bo a little thing that many who now become 
teachers in some dissenting congregation, not because they 
differ from our Articles, or dislike our Liturgy, but because 
they cannot afford to go to the universities, and have no 
prospect of being maintained by the church, if they were 
to give up their secular callings, would, in all human 
probability, be glad to join the church as deacons, and 
would thus be subject to her authorities, and would be 
engaged in her service, instead of being aliens to her, if 
not enemies. 

When we look at the condition of our country : at the 
poverty and wretchedness of so large a portion of the 
working classes ; at the intellectual and moral evils which 
certainly exist among the poor, but by no means amongst 
the poor only ; and when we witness the many partial 
attempts to remedy these evils — attempts benevolent 



INTRODUCTION. 55 

indeed and wise, so far as they go, but utterly unable to 
strike to the heart of the mischief; can any Christian 
doubt that here is the work for the church of Christ to do ; 
that none else can do it ; and that with the blessing of her 
Almighty Head she can ? Looking upon the chaos around 
us, one power alone can reduce it into order, and fill it 
with light and life. And does he really apprehend the 
perfections and high calling of Christ's church ; does he 
indeed fathom the depths of man's wants, or has he learnt 
to rise to the fulness of the stature of their divine remedy, 
who comes forward to preach to us the necessity of apos- 
tolical succession ? Grant even that it was of divine 
appointment, still as it is demonstrably and palpably un- 
connected with holiness, as it would be a mere positive and 
ceremonial ordinance, it cannot be the point of most 
importance to insist on ; even if it be a sin to neglect this, 
there are so many far weightier matters equally neglected, 
that it would be assuredly no Christian prophesying which 
were to strive to direct our chief attention to this. But 
the wholly unmoral character of this doctrine, which if it 
were indeed of God, would make it a single mysterious 
exception to all the other doctrines of the Gospel, is, God 
be thanked, not more certain than its total want of external 
evidence ; the Scripture disclaims it, Christ himself con- 
demns it. 

I have written at considerable length : yet so vast is the 
subject, that I may seem to some to have written super- 
ficially, and to have left my statements without adequate 
support. I can only say that no one paragraph has been 
written hastily, nor in fact is there one the substance of 
which has not been for several years in my mind ; indeed, 
in many instances, not only the substance, but the proofs 
in detail have been actually written : but to have inserted 
them here would have been impracticable, as they would 



56 INTRODUCTION. 

have been in tliemsclves a volume. Neither have I know- 
ingly remained in ignorance of any argument which may 
have been used in defence of Mr. Newman's system ; I 
have always desired to know what he and his friends say, 
and on what grounds they say it ; although, as I have not 
read the Tracts for the Times regularly, I may have 
omitted something which it would have been important to 
notice. Finally, in naming Mr. Newman as the chief 
author of the system which I have been considering, I 
have in no degree wished to make the question personal ; 
but Mr. Percival's letter authorizes us to consider him as 
one of the authors of it ; and as I have never had any 
personal acquaintance with him, I could mention his name 
with no shock to any private feelings either in him or in 
myself. But I have spoken of him sim^y as the main- 
tainer of certain doctrines, not as^ "maintaining them in 
any particular manner, far less as actuated by any parti- 
cular motives. I believe him to be in most serious error ; 
I believe his system to be so destructive of Christ's 
church, that I earnestly pray, and would labour to the 
utmost of my endeavours for its utter overthrow : but on 
the other hand, I will not be tempted to confound the 
authors of the system with the system itself; for I know 
that the most mischievous errors have been promulgated 
by men who yet have been neither foolish nor wicked ; 
and I nothing doubt that there are many points in Mr. 
Newman, in which I might learn truth from his teaching, 
and should be glad if I could come near him in his 
practice. 



NOTE. 



In order to prevent the possibility of misunderstanding, it is 
proper to repeat -what has been often said by others, that the English 
word " priest" has two significations, — the one according to its ety- 
mology, through the French pretre, or prestix, and the Latin preshi/- 
ierus, from the Greek Tipsa^v'tipo^ ; in which sense it is used in our 
Liturgy and Rubrics, and signifies merely " one belonging to the 
order of Presbyters,-" as distinguished from the other two orders of 
bishops and deacons. But the other signification of the word 
" priest, and which we use, as I think, more commonly, is the same 
with the meaning of the Latin word sacerdos, and the Greek word 
Ispsv;, and means, " one who stands as a mediator between God and 
the people, and brings them to God by the virtue of certain ceremo- 
nial acts which he performs for them, and which they could not per- 
form for themselves without profanation, because they are at a 
distance from God, and cannot, in their own persons, venture to 
approach towards him." In this sense of the word "priest," the 
term is not applied to the ministers of the Christian church, either 
by the Scripture, or by the authorized formularies of the Church of 
England ; although, in the other sense, as synonymous with Presby- 
ters, it is used in our Prayer Book repeatedly. Of course, not one 
word of what I have written is meant to deny the lawfulness and 
importance of the order of Presbyters in the church; I have only 
spoken against a priesthood, in the other sense of the word, in which 
a "priest" means "a mediator between God and man;" in that 
sense, in short, in which the word is not a translation of Tipsa^vtspo^, 

but tfpEVf. 



(57) 



LECTURE I 



Genesis iii. 22. 

And ilie Lord God said, Behold, iTie man is become as one of us, to 
know good and evil. 

This is declared to be man's condition after the Fall. 
I 'will not attempt to penetrate into that Tvhich is not 
to be entered into, nor to pretend to discover all that may 
be concealed beneath the outward, and in many points 
clearly parabolical, form of the account of man's tempta- 
tion and sin. Eut that condition to •which his sin brought 
him is our condition ; "with that, undoubtedly, we are con- 
cerned ; that must be the foundation of all sound views of 
human nature ; the double fact employed in the word fall 
is of the last importance ; the fact on the one hand of our 
present nature being evil, the fact on the other hand 
that this present nature is not our proper nature ; that the 
whole business of our lives is to cast it off, and to return 
to that better and holy nature, which, in truth, although 
not in fact, is the proper nature of man. 

All individual experience, then, and all history begins 
in something which is evil ; all our course, whether as 
individuals or as nations, is a progress, an advance, a 
leaving behind us something bad, and a going forwards 

towards something that is good. But individual experi- 

(o9) 



60 OUR PRESENT STATE NOT NATURAL, 

ence, and history apart from Christianity, would make us 
regard this progress as fearfully uncertain. Clear it is 
that we are in an evil case ; we have lost our way ; we 
are like men who are bewildered in those endless forests of 
reeds which line some of the great American rivers ; if we 
stay where we are, the venomous snakes may destroy us ; 
or the deadly marsh air when night comes on will be 
surely fatal ; it is death to remain, but yet if we move, we 
know not what way will lead us out, and it may be that, 
while seeming to advance, we shall but be going round and 
round, and shall at last find ourselves hard by the place 
from which we set- out in the beginning. Nay, we may 
even feel a doubt, — a doubt, I say, though not a reason- 
able belief, — but a doubt which at times would press us 
sorely, whether the tangled thicket in which we are placed 
has any end at all ; whether our fond notions of a clear 
and open space, a pure air, and a fruitful and habitable 
country, are not altogether merely imaginary ; whether 
the whole world be not such a region of death as the spot 
in which we are actually prisoned ; whether there remains 
any thing for us, but to curse our fate, and lie down and 
die. Under such circumstances, although we should 
admire the spirit which hoped against hope ; which would 
make an effort for deliverance ; which would, at any rate, 
flee from the actual evil, although other evil might receive 
him after all his struggles ; yet we could forgive those who 
yielded at once to their fate, and who sat down quietly to 
wait for their death, without the unavailing labour of a 
struggle to avoid it. 

But when the declaration has been made to us by God 
himself, that this dismal swamp in which we are prisoners 
is but an infinitely small portion of his universe, that there 
do exist all those goodly forms which we fancied ; and 
more, when God declares too that we were in the first in- 



NOR ACTUALLY IXEVITABLE. 61 

stance designed to enjoy them ; that our error brought us 
into the thicket, having been once out of it ; that we may 
escape from it again ; nay, much more still, when He 
shows us the true path to escape, and tells us, that the 
obstacles in our way have been cleared, and that he will 
give us strength to accomplish the task of escaping, and 
will guide us that we do not miss the track ; then what 
shall we say to those who insist upon remaining where they 
are, but that they are either infatuated, or indolent and 
cowardly even to insanity ; that they are refusing certain 
salvation, and are, by their own act, giving themselves 
over to inevitable death. 

This, then, is the truth taught us by the doctrine of the 
Fall; not so much that it is our certain destruction to 
remain where we are, for that our own sense and reason 
declare to us, if we will but listen to them ; but that our 
present position is not that for which God designed us, 
and that to rest satisfied with it is not a yielding to 
an unavoidable necessity, but the indolently or madly 
shrinking from the effort which would give us certain 
deliverance. 

Now it is a part of our present evil condition from 
which we must escape, that we know good and evil. We 
are in the world where evil exists within us, and about us ; 
we cannot but know it. True it is, that it was our 
misfortune to become acquainted with it ; this noisome 
wilderness of reeds, this reeking swamp ; it would have 
been far happier for us, no doubt, had we never become 
aware of their existence. But that wish is now too late. 
We are in the midst of this dismal place, and the question 
now is, how to escape from it. We may shut our eyes, 
and say we will not see objects so unsightly ; but what 
avails it, if the marsh poison finds its way by other senses, 
if we cannot but draw it in with our breath, and so we 
6 



62 IGXORAXCE NOW IS NOT IXXOCEXCE. 

must die ? And sucli is the case of those who now in this 
present worhd confound ignorance with innocence. This 
is a fatal mistaking of our present condition for our past ; 
there was a time when to the human race ignorance was 
innocence ; but now it is only folly and sin. For as I 
supposed that a man lost in ong of those noxious swamps 
might shut his eyes, and so keep himself in some measure 
in ignorance, yet the poison would be taken in with his 
breath, and so he would die : even thus, whilst we would 
fain shut the eyes of our understanding, and would so 
hope to be in safety, our passions are all the time alive 
and active, and they catch the poison of the atmosphere 
around us, and we are not innocent, but foolishly wicked. 

We must needs consider this carefully ; for, to say 
nothing of wider questions of national importance, who 
that sees before him, as we must see it, the gradual 
change from childhood to boyhood, who that sees added 
knowledge often accompanied with added sin, can help 
wishing that the earlier ignorance of evil might still be 
continued ; and fancying that knowledge is at best but a 
doubtful blessing ? 

But our path is not backwards, but onwards. Israel in 
the desert was hungry and thirsty, while in Egypt he had 
eaten bread to the full ; Israel in the desert saw a wide 
waste of sand, or sandy rock, around him, while in Egypt 
he had dwelt in those green pastures and watered gardens 
to which the Kile had given freshness and life. But that 
wilderness is his appointed way to Canaan ; its dreariness 
must be exchanged for the hills and valleys of Canaan, 
and must not drive him back again to the low plain of 
Egypt. There is a moral wilderness which lies in the 
early part of our Christian course ; but we must not hope 
to escape from it but l^j penetrating through it to its 
farthest side. 



WE MUST GO FORWARD. 63 

Undoubtedly this place, and other similar places, which 
receive us when we have quitted the state of childhood, 
and before our characters are formed in manhood, do par- 
take somewhat of the character of the wilderness ; and it 
is not unnatural that many should shrink back from them 
in fear. We see but too often the early beauty of the 
character sadly marred, its simplicity gone, its confidence 
chilled, its tenderness hardened ; where there was gentle- 
ness, we see roughness and coarseness ; where there was 
obedience, we find murmuring, and self-will, and pride ; 
■where there was a true and blameless conversation, we 
find now something of falsehood, something of profane- 
ness, something of impurity. I can well conceive what it 
must be to a parent to see his cliild retmm from school, 
for the first time, with the marks of this grievous change 
upon him : I can well conceive how bitterly he must 
regret having ever sent him to a place of so much danger ; 
how fondly he must look back to the days of his early in- 
nocence. And if a parent feels thus, what must be our 
feelings, seeing that this evil has been wrought here ? Are 
we not as those who, when pretending to give a wholesome 
draught, have mixed the cup with poison ? How can we 
go on upholding a system, the elTects of which appear to 
be so merely mischievous? 

Believe me, that such questions must and ought to 
present themselves to the mind of every thinking man 
who is concerned in the management of a school : and I do 
think that we could not answer them satisfactorily, that 
our work would absolutely be unendurable, if we did not 
bear in mind that our eyes should look forward, and not 
backward ; if we did not remember that the victory of 
fallen man is to be sought for, not in innocence, but in 
tried vu'tue. Comparing only the state of a boy after his 
first half-year, or year, at school, with his earlier state as 



64 

a child, and our reflections on the evil of our system 
would be bitter indeed ; but when we compare a boy's 
state after his fii'st half-year, or year, at school, with what 
it is afterwards ; when we see the clouds again clearing 
off; when we find coarseness succeeded again by delicacy; 
hardness and selfishness again broken up, and giving place 
to affection and benevolence ; murmuring and self-will ex- 
changed for humility and self-denial ; and the profane, or 
impure, or false tongue, uttering again only the words of 
truth and purity; and when we see that all these good 
things are now, by God's grace, rooted in the character ; 
that they have been tried, and grown up amidst the trial ; 
that the knowledge of evil has made them hate it the 
more, and be the more aware of it ; then we can look 
upon our calling with patience, and even with thankful- 
ness ; we see that the wilderness has been gone through 
triumphantly, and that its dangers have hardened and 
strengthened the traveller for all his remaining pil- 
grimage. 

For the truth is, that to the knowledge of good and 
evil we are born ; and it must come upon us sooner or 
later. In the common course of things, it comes about 
that age with which we are here most concerned. I do 
not mean that there are not faults in early childhood — we 
know that there are ; — but we know also that vdih the 
strength and rapid growth of boyhood there is a far 
greater development of these faults, and particularly far 
less of that submissiveness which belonged naturally to 
the helplessness of mere childhood. I suppose that, by an 
extreme care, the period of childhood might be prolonged 
considerably ; but still it must end ; and the knowledge 
of good and evil, in its full force, must come. I believe 
that this must be ; I believe that no care can prevent it, 
and that an extreme attempt at carefulness, whilst it 



THE EVIL IS GREAT. 65 

could not keep off tlie disorder, would weaken the strength 
of the constitution to bear it. But yet you should never 
forget, and I should never forget, that although the evils 
of schools in some respects must be, yet, in proportion as 
they exceed what must be, they do become at once mis- 
chievous and guilty. And such, or even worse, is the 
mischief when, with the evil which must be, there is not 
the good which ought to be ; for, remember, our condition 
is to know good and evil. If we know only evil, it is the 
condition of hell ; and therefore, if schools present an un- 
mixed experience, if there is temptation in abundance, but 
no support against temptation, and no examples of over- 
coming it ; if some are losing their child's innocence, but 
none, or very few, are gaining a man's virtue ; are we in 
a wholesome state then ? or can we shelter ourselves under 
the excuse that our evil is unavoidable, that we do but 
afford, in a mild form, the experience which must be 
learned sooner or later ? It is here that we must be ac- 
quitted or condemned. I can bear to see the overclouding 
of childish simplicity, if there is a reasonable hope that 
the character so clouded for a time will brighten again 
into Christian holiness. But if we do not see this, if in- 
nocence is exchanged only for vice, then we have not done 
our part, then the evil is not unavoidable, but our sin : 
and we may be assured, that for the souls so lost, there 
will be an account demanded hereafter both of us and 
you. 



6* 



LECTURE II 



1 Corinthians xiii. 11. 

When I icas a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I 
thought as a child ; hut ichen I became a man, I put away childish 
things. 

Taking the Apostle's words literally, it might appear 
that no words in the whole range of Scripture were less 
applicable to the circumstances of this particular congrega- 
tion : for they speak of childhood and of manhood ; and 
as all of us have passed the one, so a very large proportion 
of us have not yet arrived at the other. But when we 
consider the passage a little more carefully, we shall see 
that this would be a very narrow and absurd objection. 
Neither the Apostle, nor any one else, has ever stepped 
directly from childhood into manhood ; it was his purpose 
here only to notice the two extreme points of the change 
which had taken place in him, passing over its intermediate 
stages ; but he, like all other men, must have gone 
through those stages. There must have been a time in his 
life, as in all ours, v>-hen his words, his thoughts, and his 
understanding were neither all childish, nor all manly : 
there must have been a period, extending over some years, 
in vy'hich they were gradually becoming the one less and 
less, and the other more and more. And as it suited the 
purposes of his comparison to look at the change in him- 
self only when it was completed, so it will suit our object 

(GG) 



CHARACTER OF CHILDHOOD. 67 

here to regard it while in progress, to consider what it is, 
to ask the two great questions, how far it can be hastened, 
and how far it ought to be hastened. 

^' When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood 
as a child, I thought as a child ; but when I became a 
man, I put away childish things." It will be seen at once, 
that when the Apostle speaks of thought and understand- 
ing, (s^po'vouv sXo/j^o/xTjv,) he does not mean the mere intellect 
but all the notions, feelings, and desires of our minds, 
which partake of an intellectual and of a moral character 
together. He is comparing what we should call the whole 
nature and character of childhood with those of manhood. 
Let us see, for a moment, in what thej most strikingly 
differ. 

Our Lord's well-known words suggest a difference in the 
first place, which is in favour of childhood. When he 
says, " Except ye be converted, and become as little chil- 
dren, ye can in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven," 
he must certainly ascribe some one quality to childhood, in 
which manhood is generally deficient. And the quality 
w^hich he means is clearly humility ; or to speak perhaps 
more correctly, teachableness. It is impossible that a child 
can have that confidence in himself, which disposes him to 
be his own guide. He must of necessity lean on others, 
he must follow others, and therefore he must believe others. 
There is in his mind, properly speaking, nothing which can 
be called prejudice ; he will not as yet refuse to listen, as 
thinking that he knows better than his adviser. One feel- 
ing, therefore, essential to the perfection of every created 
and reasonable being, childhood has by the very law of its 
nature ; a child cannot help believing that there are some 
who are greater, wiser, better than himself, and he is dis- 
posed to follow their guidance. 

This sense of comparative weakness is founded upon 



68 CHARACTERISTICS OF CUILDIIOOD. 

truth, for a child is of course unfit to guide himself. 
Without noticing mere bodily helplessness, a child knows 
scarcely what is good and what is evil ; his desires for the 
highest good are not yet in existence ; his moral sense 
altogether is exceedingly weak, and would yield readily to 
the first temptation. And, because those higher feelings, 
which are the great check to selfishness, have not yet 
arisen within him, the selfish instinct, connected apparently 
with all animal life, is exceedingly predominant in him. 
If a child then on the one hand be teachable, yet he is at 
the same time morally weak and ignorant, and therefore 
extremely selfish. 

It is also a part of the nature of childhood to be the 
slave of present impulses. A child is not apt to look back- 
wards or forwards, to reflect or to calculate. In this also he 
difi"ers entirely from the great quality which befits man as 
an eternal beinc?, the beins; able to look before and after. 

Not to embarrass ourselves with too many points, we 
may be content with these four characteristics of childhood, 
teachableness, ignorance, selfishness, and living only for 
the present. In the last three of these, the perfect man 
should put away childish things ; in the first point, or 
teachableness, while he retained it in principle, he should 
modify it in its application. For while modesty, humility, 
and a readiness to learn, are becoming to men no less than 
to children ; yet it should be not a simple readiness to 
follow others, but only to follow the wise and good ; not a 
sense of utter helplessness which catches at the first stay, 
whether sound or brittle ; but such a consciousness of weak- 
ness and imperfection, as makes us long to be strengthened 
by Him who is almighty, to be purified by Him who is all 
pure. 

I said, and it is an obvious truth, that the change fronu 
childhood to manhood is gradual ; there is a period in our 



G9 

lives, of several years, in whicli tvg are, or should be, 
slowly exclianging the qualities of one state for those of 
the other. Dui'ing this intermediate state, then, we should 
expect to find persons become less teachable, less 
ignorant, less selfish, less thoughtless. ''Less teachable," 
I would wish to mean, in the sense of being " less 
indiscriminately teachable;" but as the evil and the good 
are, in human things, ever mixed up together, we may be 
obliged to mean "less teachable" simply. And, to say 
the very truth, if I saw in a young man the changes from 
childhood in the three other points, if I found him 
becoming wiser, and less selfish, and more thoughtful, I 
should not be very much disturbed if I found him for a 
time less teachable also. For whilst he was really 
becoming wiser and better, I should not much wonder if 
the sense of improvement rather than of imperfection 
possessed him too strongly ; if his confidence in himself 
was a little too over-weening. Let him go on a little 
farther in life, and if he really does go on improving in 
wisdom and goodness, this over-confidence will find its 
proper level. He will perceive not only how much he is 
doing, or can do, but how much there is which he does not 
do, and cannot. To a thoughtful mind added years can 
scarcely fail to teach humility. And in this the highest 
wisdom of manhood may be resembling more and more 
the state of what would be perfect childhood, that is, not 
simply teachableness, but tractableness with respect to 
what was good and true, and to that only. 

But the danger of the intermediate state between child- 
hood and manhood is too often this, that whilst in the one 
point of teachableness, the change runs on too fast, in the 
other three, of wisdom, of unselfishness, and of thought- 
fulness, it proceeds much too slowly : that the faults of 



70 OFTEN BOTH TOO FAST AND TOO SLOW. 

childhood thus remain in the character, whilst that quality 
bj means of which these faults are meant to be corrected, 
— namely, teachableness, — is at the same time diminish- 
ing. Now, teachableness as an instinct, if I may call it 
so, diminishes naturally with the consciousness of growing 
strength. By strength, I mean strength of body, no less 
than strength of mind, so closely are our body and mind 
connected with each other. The helplessness of childhood, 
which presses upon it every moment, the sense of inability 
to avoid or resist danger, which makes the child run con- 
tinually to his nurse or to his mother for protection, 
cannot but diminish by the mere growth of the bodily 
powers. The boy feels himself to be less helpless than 
the child, and in that very proportion he is apt to become 
less teachable. As this feeling of decreased helplessness 
changes into a sense of positive vigour and power, and as 
this vigour and power confer an importance on their 
possessor, which is the case especially at schools, so self- 
confidence must in one point at least, arise in the place 
of conscious w^eakness ; and as this point is felt to be 
more important, so will the self-confidence be likely to 
extend itself more and more ovei: the whole character. 

And yet, I am bound to say, that, in general, the 
teachableness of youth is, after all, much greater than we 
might at first sight fancy. Along with much self-confi- 
dence in many things, it is rare, I think, to find in a 
young man a deliberate pride that rejects advice and 
iustruction, on the strength of having no need for them, 
xind therefore, the faults of boyhood and youth are more 
owing, to my mind, to the want of change in the other 
points of the childish character, than to the too great 
change in this. The besetting faults of youth appear to 
me to arise mainly from its retaining too often the 



WHY TEACHABLENESS DECREASES. Tl 

ignorance, selfishness, and thoughtlessness of a child, and 
having arrived at the same time at a degree of bodily 
vigour and power, equal, or only a very little inferior, to 
those of manhood. 

And in this state of things, the questions become of 
exceeding interest, whether the change from childhood to 
manhood can be hastened. That it ought to be hastened, 
appears to me to be clear ; hastened, I mean, from what 
it is actually, because in this respect, we do not grow in 
general fast enough ; and the danger of over-growth is, 
therefore, small. Besides, where change of one sort is 
going on very rapidly ; where the limbs are growing and 
the bones knitting more firmly, where the strength of 
bodily endurance, as well as of bodily activity, is daily 
becoming greater ; it is self-evident that, if the inward 
changes which ought to accompany these outward ones are 
making no progress, there cannot but be derangement 
and deformity in the system. And, therefore, when I 
look around, I cannot but wish generally that the change 
from childhood to manhood in the three great points of 
wisdom, of unselfishness, and of thoughtfulness, might 
be hastened from its actual rate of progress in most in- 
stances. 

But then comes the other great question, " Can it be 
hastened, and if it can, how is it to be done ?" " Can it be 
hastened " means, of course, can it be hastened healthfully 
and beneficially, consistently with the due development of 
our nature in its after stages, from life temporal to life 
eternal ? For as the child should grow up into the man, 
so also there is a term of years given in which, according 
to God's will, the natural man should grow up into the 
spiritual man ; and we must not so press the first change 
as to make it interfere with the wholesome working of the 



72 THE QUESTION TO BE CONSIDERED 

second. The question then is, really, can the change 
from childhood to manhood be hastened in the case of 
boys and young men in general from its actual rate of 
progress in ordinary cases, without injury to the future 
excellence and full development of the man ? that is, with- 
out exhausting prematurely the faculties either of body or 
mind. 

And this is a very grave question, one of the deepest 
interest for us and for you. For us, as, according to the 
answer to be given to it, should depend our whole conduct 
and feelings towards you in the matter of your education ; 
for you, inasmuch as it is quite clear, that if the change 
from childhood to manhood can be hastened safely, it ought 
to be hastened ; and that it is a sin in every one not to try 
to hasten it : because, to retain the imperfections of child- 
hood when you can get rid of them, is in itself to forfeit 
the innocence of childhood ; to exchange the condition of 
the innocent infant whom Christ blessed, for that of the 
unprofitable servant whom Christ condemned. For with 
the growth of our bodies evil will grovr in us unavoidably ; 
and then, if we are not positively good, we are, of necessity, 
positively sinners. 

We will consider, then, what can be done to hasten this 
change in us healthfully ; whether w^e can grow in wisdom, 
in love, and in thoughtfulness, faster in youth than we now 
commonly do grow^ : and whether any possible danger can 
be connected with such increased exertion. This shall be 
our subject for consideration next Sunday. Meantime, let 
it be understood, that however extravagant it might be to 
hope for any general change in any moral point, as the 
direct result of setting truth before the mind ; yet, that it 
never can be extravagant to hope for a practical result in 
some one or two particular cases ; and that, if one or two 



AS OP PRACTICAL IMPORTANCE. 73 

even be impressed practically vfiih. what tliey hear, the 
good achieved, or, rather, the good granted us by God, is 
really beyond our calculation. It is so strictly ; for who 
can worthily calculate the value of a single human soul ? 
but it is so in this sense also, that the amount of general 
good which may be done in the end by doing good first in 
particular cases is really more than we can estimate. It 
was thus that Christ's original eleven apostles became, in 
the end, the instruments of the salvation of millions : and 
it is on this consideration that we never need despair of 
the most extensive improvements in society, if we are con- 
tent to wait God's appointed time and order, and look for 
the salvation of the many as the gradual fruit of the salva- 
tion of a few. 



LECTURE III. 



1 Corinthians xiii. 11. 

When I icas a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I 
- thought as a child ; but when I became a man, I put away childish 
things. 

After having noticed last Sunday -w-liat were those 
particular points in childhood, which in manhood should 
be put away, and having observed that this change cannot 
take place all at once, but gradually, during a period of 
several years, I proposed to consider, as on this day, 
whether it were possible to hasten this change, that is, 
whether it could be hastened without injury to the future 
development of the character ; for undoubtedly, there is 
such a thing in minds, as well as in bodies, as precocious 
growth ; and although it is not so frequent as precocious 
growth in the body, nor by any means so generally re- 
garded as an evil, yet it is really a thing to be deprecated ; 
and we ought not to adopt such measures as might be 
likely to occasion it. 

Now I believe the only reason which could make it sup- 
posed to be possible that there could be danger in hasten- 
ing this change, is drawn from the observation of what 
takes place sometimes with regard to intellectual advance- 
ment. It is seen that some young men of great ambition, 
or remarkable love of knowledge, do really injure their 
health, and exhaust their minds, by an excess of early 

(74) 



MANLINESS NOT MERELY INTELLECTUAL. 75 

study. I always grieve over such cases exceedingly ; not 
only for the individual's sake who is the sufferer, but also 
for the mischievous effect of his example. It affords a 
pretence to others to justify their own want of exertion ; 
and those to whom it is in reality the least dangerous, are 
always the very persons who seem to dread it the most. 
But we should clearly understand, that this excess of in- 
tellectual exertion at an early age, is by no means the same 
thing with hastening the change from childishness to man- 
liness. We are all enough aware, in common life, that a 
very clever and forward boy may be, in his conduct, ex- 
ceeding childish ; that those whose talents and book-know- 
ledge are by no means remarkable, may be, in their con- 
duct, exceedingly manly. Examples of both these truths 
instantly present themselves to my memory, and perhaps 
may do so to some of yours. I may say farther, that 
some whose change from childhood to manhood had been, 
in St. Paul's sense of the terms, the most remarkably ad- 
vanced, were so far from being distinguished for their 
cleverness or proficiency in their school-work, that it 
would almost seem as if their only remaining childishness 
had been displayed there. What I mean, therefore, by 
the change from childhood to manhood, is altogether dis- 
tinct from a premature advance in book-knowledge, and 
involves in it nothing of that over-study which is dreaded 
as so injurious. 

Yet it is true that I described the change from child- 
hood to manhood, as a change from ignorance to wisdom. 
I did so, certainly ; but yet, rare as knowledge is, wisdom 
is rarer; and knowledge, unhappily, can exist without 
wisdom, as wisdom can exist with a very inferior degree 
of knowledge. "We shall see this, if we consider what we 
mean by knowledge ; and, without going into a more 
general definition of it, let us see what we mean by it 



76 WISDOM IS NOT MERELY KNOWLEDGE. 

here. We mean by it, either a knowledge of points of 
scholarship, of grammar, and matters connected with 
grammar ; or a knowledge of history and geography ; or 
a knowledge of mathematics : or, it may be, of natural 
history ; or, if we use the term, " knowledge of the 
world," then we mean, I think, a knowledge of points of 
manner and fashion ; such a knowledge as may save us 
from exposing ourselves in trifling things, by awkwardness 
or inexperience. Now the knowledge of none of these 
things brings us of necessity any nearer to real thought- 
fulness, such as alone gives wisdom, than the knowledge 
of a well-contrived game. Some of you, probably, well 
know that there are games from which chance is wholly 
excluded, and skill in which is only the result of much 
thought and calculation. There is no doubt that the game 
of chess may properly be called an intellectual study ; but 
why does it not, and cannot, make any man wise? 
Because, in the first place, the calculations do but respect 
the movements of little pieces of wood or ivory, and not 
those of our own minds and hearts ; and, again, they are 
calculations which have nothing to do whatever with our 
being better men, or worse, with our pleasing God or dis- 
pleasing him. And what is true of this game, is true no 
less of the highest calculations of Astronomy, of the pro- 
foundest researches into language ; nay, what may seem 
stranger still, it is often true no less of the deepest study 
even of the actions and principles of man's nature; and, 
strangest of all, it may be, and is often true, also, of the 
study of the very Scripture itself; and that, not only of 
the incidental points of Scripture, its antiquities, chrono- 
logy, and history, but of its very most divine truths, of 
man's justification and of God's nature. Here, indeed, we 
are considering about things where wisdom, so to speak, 
sits enshrined. We are very near her, we see the place 



EARLIER MANLINESS NOT UNNATURAL. 77 

where she abides ; but her very self we obtain not. And 
why ? — but because, in the most solemn study, no less than 
in the lightest, our own moral state may be set apart from 
our consideration ; we may be unconscious all the while of 
our great want ; and forgetting our great business, to be 
reconciled to God, and to do his will : for wisdom, to 
speak properly, is to us nothing else than the true answer 
to the Philippian jailor's question, " "What must I do to be 
saved ?" 

Now then, as knowledge of all kinds may be gained 
without being received, or meant at all to be applied, as 
the answer to this question, so it may be quite distinct 
from wisdom. And when I use the term thoughtfulness, 
as opposed to a child's carelessness, I mean it to express 
an anxiety for the obtaining of this wisdom. And farther, 
I do not see how this wisdom, or this thoughtfulness, can 
be premature in any one ; or how it can exhaust before 
their time any faculties, whether of body or mind. This 
requires no sitting up late at night, no giving up of 
healthful exercise ; it brings no headaches, no feverish- 
ness, no strong excitement at first, to be followed by 
exhaustion afterwards. Hear how it is described by one 
who spoke of it from experience. " The wisdom that is 
from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be 
entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality 
and without hypocrisy." There is surely nothing of pre- 
mature exhaustion connected with any one of these 
things. 

Or, if we turn to the third point of change from child- 
hood to a Christian manhood, the change from selfishness 
to unselfishness, neither caurwe find any possible danger 
in hastening this. This cannot hurt our health or strain 
our faculties ; it can but make life at every age more peace- 
ful and more happy. Nor indeed do I suppose that any 
7* 



78 CHEERFULNESS OF YOUTH. 

one could fancy that such a change was otherwise than 
wholesome at the earliest possible period. 

There may remain, however, a vague notion, that gene- 
rally, if what we mean by an early change from childish- 
ness to manliness be that we should become religious, 
then, although it may not exhaust the powers, or injure 
the health, yet it would destroy the natural liveliness and 
gaiety of youth, and by bringing on a premature serious- 
ness of manner and language, would be unbecoming and 
ridiculous. Now, in the first place, there is a great deal 
of confusion and a great deal of folly in the common 
notions of the gaiety of youth. If gaiety mean real 
happiness of mind, I do not believe that there is more of 
it in youth than in manhood ; if for this reason only, that 
the temper in youth being commonly not yet brought into 
good order, irritation and passion are felt, probably, 
oftener than in after life, and these are sad drawbacks, as 
we all know, to a real cheerfulness of mind. And of the 
outward gaiety of youth, there is a part also which is like 
the gaiety of a drunken man ; which is riotous, insolent, 
and annoying to others ; which, in short, is a folly and a 
sin. There remains that which strictly belongs to youth, 
partly physically — the lighter step and the livelier move- 
ment of the growing and vigorous body ; partly from cir- 
cumstances, because a young person's parents or friends 
stand between him and many of the cares of life, and 
protect him from feeling them altogether ; partly from the 
abundance of hope which belongs to the beginning of every 
thing, and which continually hinders the mind from 
dwelling on past pain. And I know not which of these 
causes of gaiety would be taken away or lessened by the 
earlier change from childhood to manhood. True it is, 
that the question, "AYhat must I do to be saved?" is a 
grave one, and must be considered seriously ; but I do not 



SERIOUSNESS NECESSARY. 79 

suppose that any one proposes that a young person should 
never be serious at all. True it is, again, that if we are 
living in folly and sin, this question may be a painful one ; 
we might be gayer for a time w^ithout it. But, then, the 
matter is, what is to become of us if we do not think of 
being saved ? — shall we be saved without thinking of it ? 
And what is it to be not saved but lost ? I cannot pretend 
to say that the thought of God would not very much dis- 
turb the peace and gaiety of an ungodly and sinful 
mind ; that it would not interfere with the mirth of the 
bully, or the drunkard, or the reveller, or the glutton, or 
the idler, or the fool. It would, no doubt; just as the 
hand that was seen to write on the wall threw a gloom 
over the guests at Belshazzar's festival. I never meant 
or mean to say, that the thought of God, or that God him- 
self, can be other than a plague to those who do not love 
Him. The thought of Him is their plague here ; the 
sight of Him will be their judgment for ever. But I sup- 
pose the point is, whether the thought of Him would cloud 
the gaiety of those who were striving to please Him. It 
would cloud it as much, and be just as unwelcome and no 
more, as will be the very actual presence of our Lord to 
the righteous, when they shall see Him as He is. Can 
that which we know to be able to make old age, and sick- 
ness, and poverty, many times full of comfort, — can that 
make youth and health gloomy ? When to natural cheer- 
fulness and sanguineness, are added a consciousness of 
God's ever present care, and a knowledge of his rich 
promises, are we likely to be the more sad or the more 
unhappy ? 

What reason, then, is there for any one's not anticipa- 
ting the common progress of Christian manliness, and 
hastening to exchange, as I said before, ignorance for 
wisdom, selfishness for unselfishness, carelessness for 



80 THE IXnXITE r.ISK. 

thoughtfulness ? I see no reason why we should not ; but 
is there no reason why we should? You are young, and 
for the most part strong and healthy ; I grant that, 
humanly speaking, the chances of early death to any par- 
ticular person among you are small. But still, consider- 
ing what life is, even to the youngest and strongest, it 
does seem a fearful risk to be living unredeemed ; to be 
living in that state, that if we should happen to die, (it 
may be very unlikely, but still it is clearly possible,) — 
that if we should happen to die, we should be most cer- 
tainly lost for ever. Risks, however, we do not mind ; the 
chances, we think, are in our favour, and we will run the 
hazard. It may be so ; but he who delays to turn to God 
when the thought has been once put before him, is incur- 
rincr somethino; more than a risk. He mav not die these 
fifty or sixty years ; we cannot tell how that may be ; but 
he is certainly at this very present time hardening his 
heart, and doing despite unto the Spirit of Grace. By 
the very wickedness of putting oft' turning to God till a 
futui-e time, he lessens his power of turning to Him ever. 
This is certain ; no one can reject God's call without be- 
cominir less likelv to hear it when it is made to him acrain. 
And thus the lingering wilfully in the evil things of 
childhood, when we might be at work in putting them off, 
and when God calls us to do so, is an infinite risk, and a 
certain evil ; — an infinite risk, for it is li\dng in such a 
state that death at any moment would be certain condem- 
nation ; — and a certain evil, because, whether we live or 
not, we are actually raising up barriers between ourselves 
and our salvation ; we not only do not draw nigh to God, 
but we are going farther from Him, and lessening our 
power of drawing nigh to Him hereafter. 

L 



LECTUEE lY 



COLOSSIANS i. 9. 

We do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might le filled 
vyitli the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual under- 
standing. 

This is tlie first of three verses, all of them forming a 
part of the Epistle which was read this morning, and con- 
taining St. Paul's prayer for the Colossians in all the 
several points of Christian excellence. And the first 
thing which he desires for them, as we have heard, is, that 
they should be filled with the knowledge of God's will in 
all wisdom and spiritual understanding ; or, as he expresses 
the same thing to the Ephesians, that they should be not 
unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. 
He prays for the Colossians that they should not be 
spiritually foolish, but that they should be spiritually 
wise. 

The state of spiritual folly is, I suppose, one of the most 
universal evils in the world. For the number of those who 
are naturally foolish is exceedingly great ; of those, I mean, 
who understand no worldly thing well ; of those who are 
careless about everything, carried about by every breath 
of opinion, without knowledge, and without principle. But 
the term spiritual folly includes, unhappily, a great many 
more than these ; it takes in not those only who are in the 

(81) 



82 WORLDLY FOLLY NOT SPIRITUAL WISDOM, 

common sense of the term foolish, but a great many who 
are in the common sense of the term clever, and many who 
are even in the common sense of the terms, prudent, sen- 
sible, thoughtful, and wise. It is but too evident that 
some of the ablest men who have ever lived upon earth, 
have been in no less a degree spiritually fools. And thus, 
it is not without much truth that Christian writers have 
dwelt upon the insufficiency of worldly wisdom, and have 
warned their readers to beware, lest, while professing 
themselves to be wise, they should be accounted as fools in 
the sight of God. 

But the opposite to this notion, that those who are, as 
it were, fools in worldly matters are wise before God; 
although this also is true in a certain sense, and under 
certain peculiar circumstances, yet taken generally, it is 
the very reverse of truth ; and the careless and incautious 
language which has been often used on this subject, has 
been extremely mischievous. On the contrary, he who is 
foolish in worldly matters is likely also to be, and most 
commonly is, no less foolish in the things of God. And 
the opposite belief has arisen mainly from that strange 
confusion between ignorance and innocence, with which many 
ignorant persons seem to solace themselves. Whereas, if 
you take away a man's knowledge, you do not bring him 
to the state of an infant, but to that of a brute ; and of 
one of the most mischievous and malignant of the brute 
creation. For you do not lessen or weaken the man's 
body by lowering his mind ; he still retains his strength 
and his passions, the passions leading to self-indulgence, 
the strength which enables him to feed them by continued 
gratification. He will not think it is true to any good 
purpose ; it is very possible to destroy in him the power 
of reflection, whether as exercised upon outward things, or 
upon himself and his own nature, or upon God. But you 



EXCEPT IN A FEW INSTANCES. 83 

cannot destroy the power of adapting means to ends, nor 
that of concealing his purposes by fraud or falsehood ; you 
take only his wisdom, and leave that cunning which marks 
so" notoriously both the savage and the madman. He, 
then, who is a fool as far as regards earthly things, is 
much more a fool with regard to heavenly things ; he who 
cannot raise himself even to the lower height, how is he to 
attain to the higher ? he who is without reason and con- 
science, how shall he be endowed with the spirit of God ? 

It is my deep conviction and long experience of this 
truth, which makes me so grieve over a want of interest in 
your own improvement in hunian learning, whenever I 
observe it, over the prevalence of a thoughtless and child- 
ish spirit amongst you. I grant that as to the first point 
there are sometimes exceptions to be met with ; that is to 
say, I have known persons certainly whose interest in their 
work here was not great, and their proficiency consequently 
was small ; but who, I do not doubt, were wise unto God. 
But then these persons, whilst they were indifi'erent per- 
haps about their common school-work, were anything but 
indifferent as to the knowledge of the Bible : there was no 
carelessness there ; but they read, and read frequently, 
books of practical improvement, or relating otherwise to 
religious matters, such as many, I believe, would find even 
less inviting than the books of their common business. So 
that although there was a neglect undoubtedly of many 
parts of the school-work, yet there was no spirit of 
thoughtlessness or childishness in them, nor of general 
idleness ; and therefore, although I know that their minds 
did suffer and have suffered from their- unwise neglect of a 
part of their duty, yet there was so much attention be- 
stowed on other parts, and so manifest and earnest a care 
for the things of God, that it was impossible not to enter- 
tain for them the greatest respect and regard. These, 



84 NEGLECT OF DIVINE KXOTVLEDGE. 

however, are sucli rare cases, that it cannot be necessary 
to do more than thus notice them. But the idleness and 
want of interest which I grieve for, is one which extends 
itself but too impartially to knowledge of every kind : to 
divine knowledge, as might be expected, even more than to 
human. Those whom we commonly find careless about 
their general lessons, are quite as ignorant and as careless 
about their Bibles ; those who have no interest in general 
literature, in poetry, or in history, or in philosophy, have 
certainly no greater interest, I do not say in works of 
theology, but in works of practical devotion, in the lives 
of holy men, in meditations, or in prayers. Alas, the 
interest of their minds is bestowed on things far lower than 
the very lowest of all which I have named ; and therefore, 
to see them desiring something only a little higher than 
their present pursuits, could not but be encouraging ; it 
would, at least, show that the mind was rising upwards. 
It may, indeed, stop at a point short of the highest, it may 
learn to love earthly excellence, and rest there contented, 
and seek for nothing more perfect ; but that, at any rate, 
is a future and merely contingent evil. It is better to love 
earthly excellence than earthly folly ; it is far better in 
itself, and it is, by many degrees, nearer to the kingdom 
of God. 

There is another case, however, which I cannot but 
think is more frequent now than formerly ; and if it is so, 
it may be worth while to direct our attention to it. 
Common idleness and absolute ignorance are not what I 
wish to speak of now, but a character advanced above 
these; a character which does not neglect its school- 
lessons, but really attains to considerable proficiency in 
them ; a character at once regular and amiable, abstain- 
ing from evil, and for evil in its low and grosser forms, 
having a real abhorrence. What, then, you will say, is 



WANT OF THOUGHTFULNESS COMMON : 85 

wanting here ? I will tell you what seems to be wanting 
— a spirit of manly, and much more of Christian, thought- 
fulness. There is quickness and cleverness ; much 
pleasure, perhaps, in distinction, but little in improvement; 
there is no desire of knowledge for its own sake, whether 
human or divine. There is, therefore, but little power of 
combining and digesting what is read ; and, consequently, 
what is read passes away, and takes no root in the mind. 
This same character shows itself in matters of conduct ; 
it will adopt, without scruple, the most foolish, common- 
place notions of boys, about what is right and wrong ; it 
will not, and cannot, from the lightness of its mind, con- 
cern itself seriously about what is evil in the con-duct of 
others, because it takes no regular care of its own, with 
reference to pleasing God ; it will not do anything low 
or wicked, but it will sometimes laugh at those who do ; 
and it will by no means take pains to encourage, nay, it 
will sometimes thwart and oppose any thing that breathes 
a higher spirit, and asserts a more manly and Christian 
standard of duty. 

I have thought that this character, with its features 
more or less strongly marked, has shown itself sometimes 
amongst us, marring the good and amiable qualities of 
those in whom we can least bear to see feuch a defect, 
because there is in them really so much to interest in their 
favour. Now the number of persons of extraordinary 
abilities who may be here at any one time can depend on 
no calculable causes : nor, again, can we give any reason 
more than what we call accident, if there were to be 
amongst us at any one time a number of persons whose 
whole tendency was decidedly to evil. But if, in these 
respects, the usual average has continued, if there is no 
lack of ability, and nothing like a prevalence of vice, then 
we begin anxiously to inquire into the causes, which, 



86 MORE COMMON NOW THAN FORMERLY, 

while other things remain the same, have led to a different 
result. And one cause I do find, which is certainly 
capable of producing such a result : a cause undoubtedly 
in existence now, and as certainly not in existence a few 
years back ; nor can I trace any other besides this which 
appears likely to have produced the same effect. This 
cause consists in the number and character and cheapness, 
and peculiar mode of publication, of the works of amuse- 
ment of the present day. In all these respects the 
change is great, and extremely recent. The works of 
amusement published only a very few years since were 
comparatively few in number ; they were less exciting, and 
therefore less attractive ; they were dearer, and therefore 
less accessible ; and, not being published periodically, they 
did not occupy the mind for so long a time, nor keep alive 
so constant an expectation ; nor, by thus dwelling upon 
the mind, and distilling themselves into it as it were 
drop by drop, did they possess it so largely, colouring 
even, in many instances, its very language, and affording 
frequent matter for conversation. 

The evil of all these circumstances is actually enormous. 
The mass of human minds, and much more of the minds 
of young persons, have no great appetite for intellectual 
exercise ; but they have some, which by careful treatment 
may be strengthened and increased. But here to this 
weaR: and delicate appetite is presented an abundance of 
the most stimulating and least nourishing food possible. 
It snatches it greedily, and is not only satisfied, but 
actually conceives a distaste for anything simpler and 
more wholesome. That curiosity which is wisely given us 
to lead us on to knowledge, finds its full gratification in 
the details of an exciting and protracted story, and then 
lies down as it were gorged, and goes to sleep. Other 
faculties claim their turn, and have it. We know that 



OWIXa TO A CERTAIN CLASS OF BOOKS, 87 

in youth the healthy body and lively spirits require exer- 
cise, and in this they may and ought to be indulged : but 
the time and interest which remain over when the body 
has had its enjoyment, and the mind desires its share, this 
has been already wasted and exhausted upon things 
utterly unprofitable : so that the mind goes to its work 
hurriedly and hmguidly, and feels it to be no more than a 
burden. The mere lessons may be learnt from a sense 
of duty ; but that freshness of power which in young 
persons of ability would fasten eagerly upon some one por- 
tion or other of the v/ide field of knowledge, and there 
expatiate, drinking in health and strength to the mind, as 
surely as the natural exercise of the body gives to it 
bodily vigour, — that is tired prematurely, perverted, 
and corrupted ; and all the knowledge which else it 
might so covet, it now seems a wearying effort to attain. 

Great and grievous as is the evil, it is peculiarly hard to 
find the remedy for it. If the books to which I have been 
alluding were books of downright wickedness, we might 
destroy them wherever we found them ; we might forbid 
their open circulation ; we might conjure you to shun them 
as you would any other clear sin, whether of word or deed. 
But they are not wicked books for the most part ; they are 
of that class which cannot be actually prohibited ; nor can 
it be pretended that there is a sin in reading them. They 
are not the more wicked for being published so cheap, and 
at regular intervals ; but yet these two circumstances make 
them so peculiarly injurious. All that can be done is to 
point out the evil ; that it is real and serious I am very 
sure, and its effects are most deplorable on the minds of 
the fairest promise ; but the remedy for it rests with your- 
selves, or rather with each of you individually, so far as 
he is himself concerned. That an unnatural and constant 
excitement of the mind is most injurious, there is no 



88 THOUGHTLESSNESS MISCHIEVOUS. 

doubt ; that excitement involves a consequent weakness, is 
a law of our nature than which none is surer ; that the 
weakness of mind thus produced is and must be adverse 
to quiet study and thought, to that reflection which alone 
is wisdom, is also clear in itself, and proved too lai'gely by 
experience. And that without reflection there can be no 
spiritual understanding, is at once evident ; while without 
spiritual understanding, that is, without a knowledge and 
a study of God's will, there can be no spiritual life. And 
therefore childishness and unthoughtfulness cannot be light 
evils ; and if I have rightly traced the prevalence of these 
defects to its cause, although that cause may seem to some 
to be trifling, yet surely it is well to call your attention to 
it, and to remind you that in reading works of amusement, 
as in every other lawful pleasure, there is and must be an 
abiding responsibility in the sight of God ; that, like 
other lawful pleasures, we must beware of excess in it ; 
and not only so, but that if we find it hurtful to us, either 
because we have used it too freely in times past, or 
because our nature is too weak to bear it, that then we are 
bound most solemnly to abstain from it ; because, however 
lawful in itself, or to others who can practise it without 
injury, whatever is to us an hindrance in the way of our 
intellectual and moral and spiritual improvement, that is 
in our case a positive sin. 



LECTURE V. 



COLOSSIANS i. 9. 

We do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might hejilled 
with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual under- 
standing. 

These words, on wliicli I spoke last Sunday, appeared 
to contain so much wliicli concerns us all so deeply, and 
to suit the peculiar case of many of us here so entirely, 
that I thought they might well furnish us with matter for 
farther consideration to-day. And though I noticed one 
particular cause, which seemed to have acted mischiev- 
ously, in the last few years, upon the growth and freshness 
of the mind in youth, yet it would be absurd to suppose 
that before this cause came into existence all was well ; or 
that if it could be removed, our progress even in worldly 
knowledge would henceforth be unimpeded. There are 
many other causes no doubt which oppose our growth in 
worldly wisdom ; and still more which oppose our growth 
in the wisdom of God. 

One of these causes meets us at the very beginning ; it 
exists at this very moment ; it makes it difficult even to 
gain your attention for what is to be said. This cause is 
to be found in the want of sympathy between persons of 
very different ages, between what must be, therefore, in 
the common course of nature, different dei^^rees of thouo-ht- 
fulness. It is the want of sympathy, proper jy speaking, 
8 * f80) 



90 LITTLE SYMPATHY BETWEEN YOUTH AND AGE. 

which creates in these matters a difficulty of understand- 
ing ; for the attention and memory are alike apt to be 
careless where the mind is not interested ; and how can 
we understand that to which we scarcely listened, and 
which we imperfectly, remember ? Nature herself seems 
to lead the old and the young two different ways : and 
when the old call upon the young to be thoughtful, it 
seems as if they were but calling them to a state contrary 
to their nature ; and the call is not regarded. 

Is it then that we have here an invincible obstacle, 
which renders all attempts to inspire thoughtfulness utterly 
vain ? and if it be so, what use can there be in dwelling 
upon it ? None, certainly, if it were actually and in all 
cases invincible ; but if it be every thing short of invin- 
cible, there is much good in noticing it. There is much 
good surely in trying to impress the great truth, that 
nature must be overcome by a mightier power, or we 
perish. There is much good in meeting and allowing to 
its full extent what we are so apt in our folly to regard as 
an excuse, and which really is the earnest of our condem- 
nation. It is very true, and to be allowed to the fullest 
extent, that it is against the nature of youth in all ordi- 
nary cases to be thoughtful ; that it is very difficult for 
you even to give your attention to serious things when 
spoken of, more difficult still to remember them afterwards 
and always. It is for the very reason because it is so 
difficult, because it is a work so against nature, to raise 
the young and careless mind to the thought of God ; 
because it is so certain that, in the common course of 
things, you will not think of Him, but will follow the bent 
of your own several fancies or desires, that therefore He, 
who wills in his love to bring us to himself, knowing that 
without the knowledge of Him we must perish for ever. 



THE DIFFICULTY SHOULD BE FELT STRONGLY 91 

was pleased to give his only-begotten Son, that through 
Him we might overcome nature, and might turn to God 
and live. 

I wish that I could increase, if it were possible, the 
sense which you have of the difficulty of becoming thought- 
ful, so that you could but see that out of this very 
difficulty, and indissolubly connected with it, comes the 
grace of Christ's redemption. You have not strength of 
purpose enough to shake off folly and sin ; surely you 
have not, or else, why should Christ have died ? It is so 
hard to come to God; undoubtedly, so hard that no man 
can come unto God except God will draw him. Nature 
herself leads us to be careless, our very strength and 
spirits of themselves will not allow us to reflect. Most 
true ; for that which is born of the flesh, is flesh ; and 
we inherit a nature derived from him in whom we all die. 

I believe that it is not idle to dwell upon this ; for it is 
scarcely possible but that good and earnest resolutions 
should often enter the minds of many of you ; or, if not 
resolutions, yet at least wishes, wishes chilled but too soon, 
I fear, by the thought or feeling, that however much to 
will may be present with you, yet how to perform it you 
find not. Now, if this true sense of weakness might but lead 
any one to seek for strength vv'here it may be found, then 
indeed it would be a feeling no less blessed than true ; for 
it would urge you to seek God's help and Christ's redemp- 
tion, instead of desperately yielding to your weakness, and 
so remaining weak for ever. 

You may look at the prospect before you in all its 
reality : you may see how much must be given up, how 
much withstood, how much, endured ; how hard it is to 
alter old ways, not in itself only, but because the change 
attracts attention, and is received, it may be, with doubts 



92 THAT WE MAY SEEK OUR BEST HELP. 

as to its sincerity, -with irony, and with sneers. There is 
all this before you : it cannot be denied ; it must not be 
concealed. The way to life is not broad and easy; it is 
not that way which is most trodden. To pass from what 
we are to what we may be hereafter, from an earthly 
nature to an heavenly, cannot be an easy work, to be done 
at any time, with no effort, with no pain. It is the great- 
est work which is done in the whole world, it is the 
mightiest change ; death and birth are, as it were, com- 
bined in it ; but the Lord of birth and of death is at hand, 
to enable us to effect it. Think that this is so ; and the 
more you feel how hard a task is set before you, the more 
you will be able to understand the language of joy and 
thankfulness with' which the Scripture speaks of a human 
soul's redemption. 

This great work may be wrought for every soul here 
assembled ; the want of sympathy in sacred and serious 
things may be changed to sympathy the most intense ; the 
carelessness of fools may be changed into spiritual wisdom. 
It may be wrought for all ; but it is more happy to think 
that it will be wrought for some ; — for whom, no mortal 
eye or judgment can discern ; but it will be wrought for 
some. If many should yield in despair to their enemy, 
yet some will resist him : if Christ be to many no more 
than foolishness, if his name convey nothing more than a 
vague sense of something solemn, which passes over the 
mind for an instant, and th&n vanishes, yet to some 
undoubtedly, he will be found to be the wisdom of God, 
and the power of God. There are some here, we may 
be quite sure, who will be witnesses for ever to all the 
world of men and angels, that what truly was impossible 
to nature, is possible to nature renewed and strengthened 
by grace. 



SOME ^YILL SEEK AND FIXD IT. 93 

"Without sucii a change, it is vain, I fear, to look for 
any thing like wisdom or spiritual understanding ; for how 
can such a seed be expected to grow in a soil so shallow 
as common thoughtlessness ? and how can merely human 
motives have force to overcome so strong a tendency of 
nature ? nay, how can such motives he brought to act upon 
the mind ? for it is absolutely impossible that the middle- 
aged and the young should be brought into entire 
sympathy with each other, unless Christ's love be their 
common bond. Human wisdom in advanced life may be, 
and is to persons of strong faculties of mind, naturally 
pleasant : but how can it be made so to persons of 
ordinary faculties in early youth? There are faults 
which society condemns strongly, while the temptation to 
them in after life is slight. Persons in middle age may 
resist these easily, and abhor them sincerely ; but how 
can we make young persons do the same when the tempta- 
tion to commit them is strong, and the condemnation of 
them by their society is either very slight, or does not 
exist at all ? And, therefore, we find that, do what we 
will, the same faults continue to be common in schools, 
the same faults both of omission and commission ; there 
is the same inherent difficulty of bringing persons of 
different ages and positions to think and feel alike, unless 
Christ has become possessed of the thoughts and feelings 
of both, and so they become one with each other in him. 

But it was our Lord's charge to Peter, " Thou, when 
thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren." As sure as 
it is that some who hear me are turned, or turning, or will 
turn, to God, so sui'o is it that these, be they -few or many, 
will do something towards the strengthening of their 
brethren. Whatever good is to be done amongst us on a 
large scale, it must be done only in this way, the many 



94 

must be strengthened through the few. General changes 
effected through words addressed to a multitude of persons 
together, it is vain to look for. The words spoken here, 
like all the other means of grace which God offers, will bo 
rejected or forgotten by the majority ; the sense of your 
weakness will only lead to worse carelessness ; the same 
bad things will be done ; the same good things not done ; 
and he who were to expect that it should be otherwise, 
would not be so much over sanguine as unwise. Yet, 
knowing this full well, there is still a reasonable hope left 
for every one who is permitted to preach Christ's gospel : 
a hope which need never be abandoned, and which is 
enough, if rightly considered, to make us go on with thank- 
ful joy. I look around ; and, although a great many will 
hear in vain, yet there are some, as I have said before, 
who will not. We know not who these are, nor how many ; 
yet, being sure that there will be some, and being allowed 
to hope that there may be several, we speak not idly, nor 
as to the air ; but we speak words to which some human 
hearts will answer, we preach a Saviour in whom some will 
believe. And we know further, that, however few they may 
be, they will yet do some good ; and, that, if there are 
several, they will do much good : we know that there is a 
meaning in Christ's parable where he speaks of the little 
lump of leaven which a woman took and hid in three 
measures of meal, till the whole was leavened. 

Who those are to whom Christ's gospel will not have 
been spoken in vain, we cannot tell, nor so much as guess ; 
but, what may seem more strange is, that they cannot even 
tell themselves. There may be some who, being strongly 
moved when they hear Christ's call, may be almost ready 
to exclaim, "Lord, I am ready to go with thee whitherso- 
ever thou goest:" there may be others whose anxious and 



95 

half despairing prayer may be, '' Lord, I believe ; help 
thou mine unbelief;" but if any one is moved by Christ's 
call, and feels within himself that he should like to follow 
Christ, and to be with him always, let him cherish that 
work of the Holy Spirit within him, which has given him 
if it be only so much of the will to be saved. It is a spark 
which may be quenched in a moment ; in itself it can give 
no assurance ; but if any one watches it carefully, and 
prays that it may live and be kindled into a stronger spark, 
till at last it break out into a flame, then for him it is full 
of assurance ; God has heard his prayer ; and he has 
received the gift of the Holy Spirit, an earnest of his 
eternal inheritance. Yv^ill he not then watch and pray the 
more anxiously, lest the fruit which is now partly formed 
should never ripen ? Will he not see and feel that there 
is some reality in the things of God, that strength, and 
peace, and victory, are not vainly promised ? Y>^in he not 
hold fast the things which he has now not heard only, but 
known, lest by any means he should let them slip ? May 
God strengthen such, whoever they may be, with all the 
might of his Spirit ; and may he be with them even to the 
end. 

But for those, — who they are, again, we know not, nor 
how many ; but here, also, there will too surely be some, 
— for those who hear now, as they have often heard before, 
words which they scarcely heed, which have at times par- 
tially caught their attention, but have not produced in 
them the slightest real effect, for them the words are 
coming to an end ; they will soon be released from the 
irksome bondage of hearing them ; and another opportu- 
nity of grace will have been offered to them in vain. To- 
morrow, and the day after, they will walk as they have 
walked before, the wretched slaves of folly and passion ; 



96 THROUGH THE HARDNESS OF THEIR HEARTS. 

leaving undone all Christ's work, and greedily doing His 
enemy's. Yet even tliese Christ yet spares, he still calls 
them, he has died for them. Still the word must be 
spoken to them, whether they will hear, or whether they 
will forbear. It may be, that they will some day turn ; 
and if not, Christ has perfected his mercy towards them ; 
and Christ's servants have delivered their own souls in 
warning them. May there be but few of us on whom this 
horrible portion will fall ; yet, is it not an awful thing to 
think of, that it will, in all human probability, fall on 
some ? and that whoever hardens his heart, and resists 
the word spoken to him this day, he is one who has done 
as much as in him lies to make himself among that 
number. 



LECTURE VI. 



CoLOSSiANS iii.3. 

Ye are dead, and your life is Jiid with Christ in God. 

When I have spoken, from time to time, of denying 
ourselves for the sake of relieving others, although self- 
denial and charity are, in their full growth, amongst the 
highest of Christian graces, yet I have felt much hope that 
up to a certain degree, in their lowest and elementary 
forms at least, there might be many that would be 
disposed to practise them. For these are virtues which 
do undoubtedly commend themselves to our minds as 
things clearly good : so much so that I am inclined to 
think that the much-disputed moral sense, the nature of 
which is said to bo so hard to ascertain, exists most 
clearly in the universal perception that it is good to deny 
ourselves and to benefit others. I do not say merely that 
there is a perception that it is good to deny ourselves in 
order to benefit others ; but that there is in self-denial, 
simply, something which commands respect ; an uncon- 
scious tribute, I suppose, to the truth that the self 
which is thus denied is one which, if indulged, would run 
to evil. 

But a point of far greater difficulty, of absolutely the 
greatest difficulty, is to impress upon our minds the 
excellence of another quality, which is known by the name 
9 (97) 



98 SPIRITUAL-MINDEDXESS IS ABOVE NATURE, 

of spiritual or licavenlj-mindedness. In fact, this, — and 
this ahiiost singly, — is the transcendent part of Christian- 
ity ; that part of it "which is not according to, but above, 
nature ; which conscience, I think, itself, in the natural 
man, does not acknowledge. When Christianity speaks 
of purity, of truth, of justice, of charity, of faith and love 
to God, it speaks a language which, however belied by our 
practice, is at once allowed by our consciences : the things 
so recommended are, beyond all doubt, good and lovely. 
But when it says, in St. Paul's words, " Set your affections 
on things above, not on things on the earth : for ye are 
dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God," the lan- 
guage sounds so strange that it is scarcely intelligible; 
and if we do get to understand it, yet it seems to give a 
wrench, as it were, to our whole being, to command a 
thing extravagant and impossible. 

I am persuaded that this would be so, more or less, 
everywhere ; but in how extreme a degree must it hold 
good amongst us ! Even in poverty, in sickness, and old 
age, where this life would seem to be nothing but a burden, 
and the command to " set the affections on things above " 
might appear superfluous, still the known so prevails over 
the unknown, the familiar over the incomprehensible, that 
hope and affection find continually their objects in this 
world, there is still a clinging to life, and an unwillingness 
to die. But in a state the very opposite to this, in plenty, 
in health, in youth ; with much of enjoyment actually in 
our hands, and more in prospect ; with just so much 
mystery over our coming life as to keep alive interest, yet 
with enough known and understood in its prospects to 
awaken sympathy ; what deafest ear of the deaf adder 
could ever be so closed against the voice of the charmer, 
as our minds, so engrossed with the enjoyments and the 



NATURAL TO YOUTH. 99 

hopes of earth, are closed against the voice which speaks 
of the things of heaven ? 

Again, I have said, vrhen speaking of other subjects, 
that I looked upon the older persons among jou as a sort 
of link between me and the younger, who communicated, 
in some instances, by their language and example, some- 
thing of an impression of the meaning of Christian 
teaching. But when we speak of a thing so high as 
spiritual-mindedness, it seems as if none of us can be a 
link between Christ's words and our brethren's minds : 
as if we all stand alike at an infinite distance from the 
high and unapproachable truth. The mountain of God 
becomes veiled, as it were, with the clouds which rested 
upon Sinai ; we cannot approach near it, but stand far off, 
for a moment, perhaps, in awe ; but soon in neglect and 
indifference. 

Let any one capable of thinking, but in the full vigour 
of health of body and mind, placed far above want, and 
with the prospect, according to all probability, of many 
years of happy life before him, let such an one go forth, 
at this season of the year above all, let him see the vast 
preparation for life in all nature, amongst all living crea- 
tures, in every tree, and in every plant of grass ; let him 
feel the warmth of the sun, becoming every day stronger 
and stronger; let him be possessed, in every sense, with 
an impression of the vigour and beauty and glory around 
him ; and let him feel no less a vigour in himself, too, of 
body and mind, and infinitely varied power of enjoyment 
in so many faculties of repose and of energy, — and then 
let him calmly consider what St. Paul could mean, when 
he says generally to Christians, " Set your affections on 
things above, not on things on the earth ; for ye are dead, 
and your life is hid with Christ in God." 

Let a person capable of thinking, and such as I have 



100 ST. taul's explanation. 

supposed in all other respects, consider what St. Paul 
could mean by calling him '^ dead." With an almost 
thrilling consciousness of life, with an almost bounding 
sense of vigour in body and mind, he is told that he is 
*' dead." And stranger still, he is told so by one whose re- 
corded life, and existing writings declare that he too must 
have had in himself a consciousness of life no less lively ; 
that there was in him an activity and energy which neither 
age nor sufferings could quell ; that he wielded an in- 
fluence over the minds of thousands, such as kings or con- 
querors might envy. If St. Paul could stand by our side, 
think we that he, any more than ourselves, would be in- 
sensible to the power within him, and to the beauty and 
the glory without ? Yet his words are recorded ; he bids 
us not set our affections on things on the earth ; he declares 
of himself, and of us equally, if we are Christ's servants, 
that we are dead, and that our life is hid with Christ in 
God. 

I have put the difficulty in its strongest form, for it is 
one well worth considering. What St. Paul here urges is 
indeed the highest perfection of Christianity, and there- 
fore of human nature ; but it is not an impossible perfec- 
tion, and St. Paul's own life and character are our warrant 
that it is nothing sickly, or foolish, or fanatical. But let 
us first hear the whole of St. Paul's language: "If ye, 
then, be risen with Christ, seek those things which are 
above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God. Set 
your affections on things above, not on things on the earth. 
For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 
When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall we 
also appear with him in glory. Mortify therefore your 
members which are upon the earth ; fornication, unclean- 
ness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetous- 
ness, which is idolatry." "Mortify," I need not say, is 



so MITCH OF SIN AND SUFFERING AROUND US 101 

to make dead, to destroy. "Ye are dead;" therefore let 
your members on earth be dead ; " fornication, unclean- 
ness, inordinate affection," &c. As if he had said, By 
becoming Christians ye engaged to be dead ; and therefore 
see to it that ye are so. But what he requires us to make 
dead or to destroy, are our evil affections and desires ; it 
is manifest, then, that it is to these that, by becoming 
Christians, we engage to become dead. 

This is true ; and it is most certain that Christ requires 
us to be dead only to what is evil. But the essence of 
spiritual-mindedness consists in this, that it is assumed 
that with earth, and all things earthly, evil or imperfection 
are closely mixed; so that it is not possible to set our 
affections keenly upon, or to abandon ourselves to the en- 
joyment of, any earthly thing without the danger of those 
affections and that enjoyment becoming evil. In other 
words, there is that in the state of things within and 
around us, which renders it needful to be ever watchful ; 
and watchfulness is inconsistent with an intensity of 
delight and enjoyment. 

For, consider the case which I w.as just supposing ; that 
lively sense of the beauty of all nature, that indescribable 
feeling of delight which arises out of the consciousness of 
health, and strength and power. Suppose that we aban- 
don ourselves to such impressions without restraint, and is 
it not manifest that they are the extreme of godless pride 
and selfishness ? For do we not know that in this world, 
and cloige to us wherever we are, there is, along with all 
the beauty and enjoyment which we witness, a large por- 
tion also of evil, and of suffering? And do we not know 
that He who gave to the earth its richness, and who set 
the sun to shine in the heavens, and who gave to us that 
wonderful frame of body and mind, whose healthful work- 
ings are so delightful to us, that He gave them that we 
9* 



102 CALLS US TO WORK AND NOT TO ENJOY. 

might use both body and mind in His service ; that the 
soldier has something else to do than to gaze like a child 
on the splendour of his uniform or the brightness of his 
sword ; that those faculties which we feel as it were burn- 
ing within us, have their work before them, a work far 
above their strength, though multiplied a thousand fold ; 
that the call to them to be busy is never silent ; that there 
is an infinite voice in the infinite sins and sufi*erings of 
millions which proclaims that the contest is raging around 
us ; that every idle moment is treason ; that now it is the 
time for unceasing efi"orts ; and that not till the victory 
is gained may Christ's soldiers throw aside their arms, and 
resign themselves to enjoyment and to rest ? 

Then when we turn to the words, " our life is hid with 
Christ in God," the exceeding greatness of Christ's pro- 
mises rises upon us in something of the fulness of their 
reality. Some may know the story of that German noble- 
man,^ whose life had been distinguished alike by genius 
and worldly distinctions, and by Christian holiness ; and 
who, in the last morning of his life, when the dawn broke 
into his sick chamber, prayed that he might be supported 
to the window, and might look once again upon the rising 
sun. After looking steadily at it for some time, he cried 
out, " Oh ! if the appearance of this earthly and created 
thing is so beautiful and so quickening, how much more 
shall I be enraptured at the sight of the unspeakable 
glory of the Creator Himself!" That was the feeling of 
a man whose sense of earthly beauty had all the keenness 
of a poet's enthusiasm ; but who, withal, had in his 
greatest health and vigour preserved the consciousness 
that his life was hid with Christ in God ; that the things 
seen, how beautiful soever, were as nothing to the things 
which are not seen. And so, if from the feeling of 

* The Baroa Yon Canitz. 



AND WE SHOULD FEEL THIS TO EE TRUE, 103 

natural enjoyment we turn, at once thankfully and 
earnestly, to remember God's service, and to address 
ourselves to his work ; and sadly remember, that, although 
we can enjoy, yet that many are suffering ; and that, 
whilst they are so, enjoyment in us for more than a brief 
space of needful rest cannot but be sin ; then there must 
come upon us, most strongly, the impression of that life 
where sin and suffering are not ; where not God's works 
only, but God Himself is visible ; where the vigour and 
faculties which we feel within us are not the passing 
strength of a decaying body, nor the brief prime of a 
mind which in a few years must sink into dotage ; but the 
strength of a body incorruptible and eternal, the ripeness 
of a spirit which shall go on growing in wisdom and love 
for ever. 

Thus, then, if we consider again St. Paul's meaning, we 
shall find that, high and pure as it is, it is nothing un- 
reasonable or impossible ; that what he requires us to be 
dead to absolutely is that which is evil ; that, because of 
the mixture of evil with ourselves and all around us, this 
life must not and cannot be a life of entire enjoyment 
without becoming godless and selfish ; that, therefore, our 
affections cannot be set upon earthly things so as to enjoy 
them in and for themselves entirely, without becoming in- 
ordinate, and therefore evil. He does require us, old and 
young alike, to set our affection on things above : to re- 
member that with God, and with Him alone, can be our 
rest, and the fulness of our joy ; and amidst our pleasure 
in earthly things to retain in our minds, first, a grateful 
sense of their Giver ; secondly, a remembrance of their 
passing nature ; and thirdly, a consciousness of the evil 
•that is in the world, which makes it a sin to resign our- 
selves to any enjoyment, except as a permitted refresh- 
ment to strengthen us for duty to come. Above all, let 



10-i NOT LIVING TO OURSELVES, BUT TO GOD. 

one feeling be truly cherished, and it will do more, per- 
haps, than any other to moderate our pleasure in earthly 
things, and to. render it safe, and wholesome, and Chris- 
tianlike. That feeling is the remembrance of our own 
faults. Let us bear these in mind as God does ; let us 
consider how displeasing they are in His sight ; how often 
they are repeated ; how little they deserve the enjoyments 
which are given us. If this does not change our selfish 
pleasure into a zealous gratitude, then, indeed, sin must 
have a dominion over us ; for the natural effect would be, 
that our hearts should burn within us for very shame, 
and should enkindle us to be thankful with all our 
strength for blessings so undeserved ; to show some- 
thing of our love to God who has so richly shown his love 
to us. 



LECTURE VII 



Corinthians iii. 21 — 23. 

All tilings are yours ; wlietlier Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the 
toorld, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come ; all are 
yours ; and ye are Christ's ; and Christ is God's. 

It is very possible, that all may not distinctly under- 
stand the force of the several clauses of this passage, yet, 
all, I suppose, would derive a general impression from it, 
that it spoke of the condition of Christians in very exalted 
language, and made it to extend to things in this world, 
as well as to things in the world to come. But can it be 
good for us to dwell on our exaltation ? And if we do, 
may we not dread lest such language might be used to- 
wards us as that which St. Paul uses in the very next 
chapter to the Corinthians, "Now ye are full, now ye are 
rich, ye have reigned as kings without us ; and I would to 
God ye did reign, that we also might reign with you." It 
would seem, however, that it would be good for us to dwell 
on the greatness of our condition and privileges, because 
St. Paul, who thus upbraids the Corinthians with their 
pride, had yet himself immediately before laid the picture 
of their high privileges, in the words of the text, in full 
detail before them, as if he wished them carefully to con- 
sider it. And so indeed it is. It feeds pride to dwell 
upon our good qualities or advantages, as individuals, or as 
a class in society, or as a nation, or as a sect or party ; 

(105) 



106 WE MUST LOOK UPWAllD. 

but, to speak generally, our advantages and privileges, as 
Christians, have not a tendency to excite pride ; for some 
reasons in the nature of the case ; for this reason amongst 
ourselves particularly, because the very essence of pride 
consists in contrast ; we are proud that we are, in some 
one or more points, superior to others who come imme- 
diately under our observation. Now, we have so little to 
do with any who are not Christians, that the contrast is in 
this case wanting ; we have none over whom to be proud ; 
none whom we can glory in surpassing ; and, therefore, a 
consideration of our Christian advantages, in the absence 
of that one element which might feed pride, is likely with 
us to work in a better manner, and to lead rather to thank- 
fulness and increased exertion. 

I say to increased exertion ; for what would stop exer- 
tion is pride. It is the turning back, and pausing to look 
with satisfaction on what is below us, rather than the 
looking upward to the summit, and thinking how much our 
actual elevation has brought us on the way towards it. 
And, further, there is coupled with every consideration of 
Christian privileges, the thought of what it must be to 
leave such privileges unimproved. In this respect, how 
well does the language of the two lessons from Deu- 
teronomy suit the lesson from the Epistle to the Corin- 
thians. We heard the description of the beauty and 
richness of the land which God gave to his people, — there 
were their advantages and privileges, — we heard also, the 
declaration of their unworthiness, and the solemn threat- 
ening of vengeance if, after having received good, they did 
evil. And as the vengeance has fallen upon them to the 
utmost, so we are taught expressly to apply their example 
to ourselves. ^'If God spared not the natural branches," 
such was St. Paul's language to the church at Rome, 
*'take heed lest he also spare not thee." 



OUR MINISTERS NOT OUR IDOLS. 107 

Let US not fear, then, to consider more nearly the high 
privileges which, as Christians, we enjoy : let us endeavour 
to understand, not merely generally, but in detail, the 
exalted language of the text, where it is said, that all 
things are ours ; Paul, Apollos, and Cephas, the world, 
and life, and death, the things of time, and the things of 
eternity. These are ours because we are Christ's, and 
Christ is God's ; they are ours so long as we are Christ's, 
and so far as we are his truly. They are not ours so far 
as we are not his : they are ours in no degree whatever 
the moment that he shall declare that we are his no longer. 

"Paul, and Apollos, and Peter, are ours." This, per- 
haps, is the expression which we should understand least 
distinctly of any. It is an expression, however, of deep 
importance, though perhaps less so here than in congrega- 
tions of a difierent sort. I need not, therefore, dwell on 
it long now. But the Corinthians, as many Christians 
have done since, were apt to think more of their being 
Christians of a certain sort, than of being Christians 
simply: some said, " Yv^e have Paul's view of Christianity, 
the true and sound view of it, free from superstition :" 
others said, " But we have Peter's view of Christianity, 
one of Christ's own apostles, who were with him on earth ; 
ours is the true and earliest view of it, free from all inno- 
vations :" and others, again, said, "Nay, but we have 
been taught by Apollos, an eloquent man, and mighty in 
the Scriptures ; one who best understands how to unite 
the law and the gospel ; one who has given us the full 
perfection of Christianity." No doubt there were some 
differences of views even between Paul, and Peter, and 
Apollos ; for while, on the one hand, they were all enlight- 
ened by the Spirit of God, yet, on the other hand, they 
retained still their human differences of character and 



108 THE ATORLD IS OURS. 

disposition, which must on several occasions have been 
manifest. But St. Paul does not tell us what these were, 
nor how far they extended, nor to what degree they had 
been exaggerated by those who heard them. He docs not 
insist upon the truth of his own view, nor wish the Corin- 
thians to lay aside their divisions, after the manner so 
zealously enforced by some persons now, namely, that 
those who said they were of Peter, or of Apollos, should 
confess that they had been in error, and declare themselves 
to be now only of Paul. Such a condemnation of schism 
he would have held to be in itself in the highest degree 
schismatical. But St. Paul was earnest, that schism 
should be ended after another way than this, by all parties 
remembering, that whatever became of the truth or false- 
hood of their own particular views of Christianity, yet, 
that Christianity according to any of their views was the 
one great thing v/hich was their glory and their salvation. 
" Paul, and Apollos, and Peter, are all yours : but you are 
Christ's." You should not glory in men ; that you belong 
to a purer church than other Christians ; but that you 
belong to the church of Christ ; that church, which, in its 
most pure particular branches, has never been free from 
some mixture of human infirmity and error ; nor yet, in 
its worst branches, has ever lost altogether the seal of 
Christ's Spirit, nor ceased to believe in Christ crucified. 

But the next words are of more particular concern to us 
here. *' The world, and life, and death, and things present, 
and things to come, are all ours." They are all ours, so 
far as we are Christ's. The world is ours ; its manifold 
riches and delights, its various wisdom, all are ours. They 
are ours, not as a thing stolen, and which will be taken 
from us with a heavy over-payment of penalty, because 
we stole it when it did not belong to us ; but they are ours 



STOLEN PLEASURES UNLAWFUL. 109 

by God's free gift, to minister to our comfort, and to our 
good. And this is the great difference ; the good things 
of this world are stolen by many; but they belong, by 
God's gift, to those only who are Christ's : and there is 
the sure sign, generally, to be seen of their being stolen, 
— an unwillingness that He to whom of right they belong 
should see them. What a man steals, he enjoys, as it 
were, in fear : if the owner of it finds him with it, then all, 
his enjoyment is gone ; he wishes that he had never 
touched it ; it is no source of pleasure to him, but merely 
one of terror. And so it is often with our stolen pleasures, 
— stolen, I mean, not in respect of man, but of God, — 
stolen, because we do not feel them to be God's gift, nor 
receive them, as from him, with thankfulness. They may 
be very lawful pleasures, so far as other men are concerned ; 
pleasures bought, it may be, with our own money, or given 
to us by our own friends, and enjoyed without any injury 
to any one. They may be the very simplest enjoyments 
of life, our health, the fresh air, our common food, our 
common amusements, our common society; things most 
permitted to us all, as far as man is concerned, but yet 
things which are constantly stolen by us, because we take 
them without God's leave, and enjoy them not as his gifts. 
They are all his, and he gives them freely to his children. 
If we are his children, he gives them to us ; and delights 
in our enjoyment of them, as any human father loves to 
see the pleasure of his children in those things which it is 
good for them to enjoy. But then, is any child afraid of 
his father so seeing him ? or is the thought of his father 
any interruption to his enjoyment ? If it would be, we 
should be sure that there was something wrong ; that the 
enjoyment, either in itself, or with respect to the 
particular case of that child, was a stolen one. And even 
10 



110 LOOKING 

as simple is the state of our dread of God, of our wish to 
keep his name and his thought away from us. It is the 
sure sign that our pleasures are stolen, either as being 
wrong in themselves, or much oftener, because we have 
taken them without being fit for them, have snatched 
them for ourselves, instead of receiving them at the hands 
of God. Two of us may be daily doing the very same 
thing in most respects, — enjoying actually the very same 
pleasures, whether of body or of mind ; the same exercises, 
the same studies, the same indulgences, the same society, 
— and yet these very same things may belong rightfully 
to the one, and be stolen by the other. To the one they 
may come with a double blessing, as the assurance of 
God's greater love hereafter : to the other, they, are but 
an addition to that sad account, when all good things en- 
joyed here, having been not our own rightly, but stolen, 
shall be paid for in over measure, by evil things to be 
sufi"ered hereafter. 

And what I have said of the world, will apply also to 
life and to death. Oh, the infinite difi'erence whether life 
is ours, or but stolen for an instant ; whether death is 
ours, our subject, ministering only to our good ; or our 
fearful enemy, our ever keen pursuer, from whose grasp 
we have escaped for a few short years, but who is follow- 
ing fast after us, and when he has once caught us will 
hold us fast for ever ! Have we ever seen his near 
approach — has he ever forced himself upon our notice 
w-hether we would or no ? But two days since he was 
amongst us, — we were, as it were, forced to look upon 
him. Did we think that he was ours, or that we were 
his ? If we are his, then indeed he is fearful : fearful to 
the mere consciousness of nature ; a consciousness which 
no arguments can overcome ; fearful if it be merely the 



THE CHRISTIAN MAY REJOICE. Ill 

parting from life, if it be merely the resigning that 
wonderful thing -which we call our being. It is fearful to 
go from light to darkness, from all that we have ever 
known and loved, to that of which we know and love no- 
thing. But if death, even thus stingleF.s, is yet full of 
horror, what is he with his worst sting beside, the sting of 
our sins ? What is he when he is taking us, not to 
nothingness, but to judgment ? He i'i indeed so fearful 
then, that no words can paint him half so truly as our 
foreboding dread of him, and no arguments which the 
wit of man can fui-nish can strip him of his terrors. 

But what if death too, as well as life, be ours ? — 
which he is, if we are Christ's; for Christ has conquered 
him. If he be ours, our servant, our minister, sent but to 
bring us into the presence of oui* Lord, then, indeed, his 
terrors, his merely natural terrors, the outside roughness 
of his aspect, are things which the merest child need not 
shrink from. Then disease and decay, however pain- 
ful to li™g friends to look upon, have but little pain 
for him who is undergoing them. For it is not only 
amidst the tortures of actual martyrdom that Christians 
have been more than conquerors, — in common life, on the 
quiet or lonely sick bed, under the grasp of fever or of 
consumption, the conquest has been witnessed as often 
and as completely. It is not a little thing when the 
faintest whisper of thought to which expiring nature can 
give utterance breathes of nothing but of peace and of 
forgiveness. It is not a little thing when the name of 
Christ possesses us wholly; not distinctly, it may be, 
for reason may be too weak for this ; but with an 
indescribable power of support and comfort. Or even 
if there be a last conflict, — a season of terror and of 
pain, a valley of the shadow of death, dark and gloomy, 



112 WE SHOULD EE TRULY CHEIST'S. 

— yet even there Christ is with his servants, and as 
their trial is so is his love. Thus it is, if death be ours ; 
and death is ours, if we be Christ's. And are we not 
Christ's ? We bear his name, we have his outward seal 
of belonging to his people, — can we refuse to be his in 
heart and true obedience ? Would we rather steal our 
pleasures than enjoy them as our own ; steal life for an 
instant, rather than have it our sure possession for ever ? 
Would we rather be fugitives from death, fugitives whom 
he will surely recover and hold fast, than be able to say 
and to feel that death as well as life is ours, things 
to come, as well as things present, because we are truly 
Christ's ? 



LECTURE VIII 



Galatians v. 16, 17. 

Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. For 
the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh ; 
and these are contrary the one to the other, so that ye cannot do the 
things that ye would. 

" "VYe cannot do the things that "we would." These are 
words of familiar and common use ; this is the language 
in which we are all apt to excuse, whether to ourselves or 
to others, the various faults of our conduct. We should 
he glad to do hotter, so we say and think, hut the power 
to do so fails us. And so far it may seem that we are but 
echoing the apostle's language ; for he says the very same 
thing, " Ye cannot do the things that ye would." Yet 
the words as we use them, and as the apostle used them, 
have the most opposite meaning in the world. We use 
them as a reason why we should he satisfied, the apostle 
as a reason why we should he alarmed ; we intend them 
to he an excuse, the apostle meant them to be a certain sign 
of condemnation. 

The reasons of this difference may he understood very 
easily. We, in the common course of justice, should 
think it hard to punish a man for not doing what he can- 
not do. We think, therefore, that if we say that we can- 
not do well, we establish also our own claim to escape from 
punishment. But God declares that a state of sin is and 
must be a state of misery; and that if we cannot escape 
the sin, we cannot escape the misery. According to God's 
10* (113) 



114 god's meaning of the words " I CANNOT. 

meaning, then, the words, ^'Ye cannot do the things 
which ye would," mean no other than this : "Ye cannot 
escape from hell ; ye cannot be redeemed from the power 
of death and of Satan ; the power is wanting in you, how- 
ever much you may wish it : death has got you, and it 
will keep you for ever." So that, in this way, sickness or 
weakness of the soul is very like sickness or weakness of 
the body. 'We cannot help being ill or weak in many 
cases : is that any reason why, according to the laws of 
God's providence, we should not suffer the pain of illness ? 
Or is it not, rather, clear that we suffer it just because we 
have not the power to get rid of it ; if we had the power 
to be well, we should be well. A man's evils are not gone 
because he wishes them away ; it is not he who would fain 
see his chains broken, that escapes from his bondage ; but 
he who has the strength to rend them asunder. 

Thus, then, in St. Paul's language, " Ye cannot do the 
things that ye would," means exactly, "Ye are not re- 
deemed, but in bondage ; ye are not saved, but lost." But 
he goes on to the reason why we cannot do the things 
which we would, which is, "because the "flesh and the 
Spirit are contrary to -one another," and pull us, as it 
were, different ways. Just as we might say of a man in 
illness, that the reason why he is not well, as he wishes to 
be, is because his healthy nature and his disease are con- 
trary to one another, and are striving within him for the 
mastery. His blood, according to its healthy nature, 
would flow calmly and steadily ; his food, according to his 
healthy nature, would be received with appetite, and 
would give him nourishment and strength ; but, behold, 
there is in him now another nature, contrary to his 
healthy nature : and this other nature makes his blood 
flow with feverish quickness, and makes food distasteful to 
him, and makes the food which he has eaten before to be- 



WHY THE SICK CANNOT BE WELL. 115 

come, as it were, poison; it does not nourish him or 
strengthen, but is a burden, a weakness, and a pain. As 
long as these two natures thus struggle within him, the 
man is sick ; as soon as the diseased nature prevails, the 
man sinks and dies. He does not wish to die, — not at all, 
— most earnestly, it may be, does he wish to live ; but his 
diseased nature has overcome his healthy nature, and so 
he must die. If he would live, in any sense that deserves 
to be called life, the diseased nature must not overcome, 
must not struggle equally ; it must be overcome, it must 
be kept down, it must be rendered powerless ; and then, 
when the healthy nature has prevailed, its victory is 
health and strength. 

So far all is alike ; but what follows afterwards ? As 
"ye cannot do the things which ye would, because the 
flesh and the Spirit are contrary to one another," — what 
then? "Therefore," says the apostle, "walk in the 
Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh." 
Surely there is something marvellous in this. Eor, let us 
speak the same language to the sick man : tell him, 
" Follow thy healthy nature, and thou shalt not be sick," 
what would the words be but a bitter mockery ? " How 
can you bid me," he would say, "to follow my healthy 
nature, when ye know that my diseased nature has bound 
me ? Have ye no better comfort than this to ofi'er me ? 
Tell me rather how I may become able to follow my 
healthy nature ; show me the strength which may help my 
weakness ; or else your words are vain, and I never can 
recover." Most true would be this answer; and therefore 
disease and death do make havoc of us all, and the 
healthy nature is in the end borne down by the diseased 
nature, and sooner or later the great enemy triumplis 
over us, and, in spite of all our wishes and fond desires 



116 ALL MAY WALK IN TIIi: SPIRIT, 

for life, we go down, death's conquered subjects, to the 
common grave of all living. 

This happens to the bodies of us all ; to the souls of 
only too many. But why does it not happen also to the 
souls of all ? How is it that some do fulfil the apostle's 
bidding ? that they do walk in the Spirit, and therefore do 
not fulfil the lusts of the flesh ; and therefore having con- 
quered their diseased nature, they do walk according to 
their healthful nature, and are verily able to do, and do 
continually, the very things that they would? Surely 
this so striking difi*erence, between the universal conquest 
of our diseased nature in the body, and the occasional 
victory of the healthy nature in the soul, shows us clearly 
that for the soul there has appeared a Redeemer already, 
while for the body the redemption is delayed till death 
shall be swallowed up in victory. 

For most true is it that in ourselves we could not 
deliver ourselves either soul or body. "Walk in the 
Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh," 
might have been as cruel a mockery to us, as the similar 
words addressed to the man bodily sick, — " Walk accord- 
ing to thy healthy nature, and thou shalt not sufier from 
disease." They might have been a mockery, but blessed 
be God, they are not. They are not, because God has 
given us a Redeemer ; they are not, because Christ has 
died, yea rather has risen again ; and because the Spirit 
of Christ helpeth our infirmities, and gives us that power 
which by ourselves we had not. 

Not by wishing then to be redeemed, but by being re- 
deemed, shall we escape the power of death. Not by say- 
ing, " Alas ! we cannot do the things that we would !" but by 
becoming able to do them. Walk in the Spirit, and ye 
shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh ; but if ye do fulfil & 
them, ye must die. 



BY PEAYER AND PERSEVERANCE. 117 

The power to walk in the Spirit is given by the Spirit ; 
but either all have not this power, or all do not use it. I 
think rather it is that all have it not, for if they had it, a 
power so mighty and so beneficent, they surely could not 
help using it. All have it not ; but I do not say that they 
all might not have it ; on the contrary, all might have it, 
but in point of fact they have it not. They have it not 
because they seek it not : for an idle wish is one thing ; a 
steady persevering pursuit is another. They seek not the 
Spirit by the appointed means, the means of prayer and 
attending to God's holy word, and thinking of life and 
death and judgment* 

Do those seek the spirit of God who never pray to God ? 
Clearly they do not. For they who never pray to God 
never think of Him ; they who never think of Him, by the 
very force of the terms it follows that they cannot seek 
his help. And yet they say, " Oh, I wish to be good, but 
I cannot !" But this, in the language of the Scripture, is 
a lie. If they did wish to be good they would seek the 
help that could make them so. There is no boy so young 
as not to know that, when temptation is on him to evil, 
prayer to God will strengthen him for good. As sure as 
we live, if he wished really to overcome the temptation, he 
would seek the strength. 

Consider what prayer is, and see how it cannot but 
strengthen us. He who stands in a sheltered place, where 
the wind cannot reach him, and with no branches over his 
head to cause a damp shade, and then holds up his face or 
his hands to the sun, in his strength, can he help feeling 
the sun's warmth ? Now, thus it is in prayer : we turn to 
God, we bring our souls, with all their thoughts and feel- 
ings, fully before Him ; and by the very act of so doing, 
we shelter ourselves from every chill of worldly care, we 
clear away every intercepting screen of worldly thought 



118 FOR PRAYER BRINGS US TO GOD. 

and pleasure. It is an awful thing so to submit ourselves 
wholly to the influence of God. But do it ; and as surely 
as the sun will warm us if we stand in the sun, so will the 
Giver of light and life to the soul pour his Spirit of life 
into us ; even as we pray, we become changed into his 
image. 

This is not spoken extravagantly. I ask of any one 
who has ever prayed in earnest, whether for that time, 
and while he was so praying, he did not feel, as it were, 
another man ; a man able to do the things which he 
would ; a man redeemed and free. But most true is it 
that this feeling passes away but too soon, when the 
prayer is done. Still for the time, there is the effect ; we 
know what it is to put ourselves, in a manner, beneath the 
rays of God's grace ; but we do not abide there long, and 
then we feel the damp and the cold of earth again. 

Therefore says the Apostle, "Pray without ceasing." 
If we could literally pray always, it is clear that we 
should sin never : it may be thus that Christ's redeemed, 
at his coming, as they will be for ever with him and with 
the Father, can therefore sin no more. For where God is, 
there is no place left for sin. But we cannot pray 
always : we cannot pray the greatest portion of our time ; 
nay, we can pray, in the common sense of the term, only 
a very small portion of it. Yet, at least, we can take 
heed that we do pray sometimes, and that our prayer be 
truly in earnest. We can pray then for God's help to 
abide with us when we are not praying : we can commit to 
his care, not only our hours of sleep, but our hours of 
worldly waking. " I have work to do, I have a busy 
world around me ; eye, ear, and thought will be all needed 
for that work, done in and amidst that busy world ; now, 
ere I enter upon it, I would commit eye, ear, thought and 
wish to Thee. Do thou bless them, and keep their work 



HOW TO NOURISH THE SPIRIT OP PRAYER: 119 

thine ; that as, through thy natural jaws, my heart beats 
and my blood flows without my thought for them, so my 
spiritual life may hold on its course, through thy help, at 
those times when my mind cannot consciously turn to 
Thee to commit each particular thought to thy service." 

But I dare not say that by any the most urgent prayers, 
uttered only at night and morning, God's blessing can 
thus be gained for the whole intervening day. For, in 
truth, if we did nothing more, the prayers would soon 
cease to be urgent ; they would become formal, that is, 
they would be no prayers at all. For prayer lives in the 
heart, and not in the mouth ; it consists not of words, but 
wishes. And no man can set himself heartily to wish 
twice a day for things, of which he never thinks at other 
times in the day. So that prayer requires in a manner to 
be fed, and its food is to be found in reading and thinking ; 
in reading God's word, and in thinking about him, and 
about the world as being his work. 

Young men and boys are generally, we know, not fond 
of reading for its own sake ; and when they do read for 
their own pleasure, they naturally read something that in- 
terests them. Now, what are called serious books, includ- 
ing certainly the Bible, do not interest them, and therefore 
they are not commonly read. What shall we say, then ? 
Are they not interested in becoming good, in learning to 
do the things which they would ? If they are not, if they 
care not for the bondage of sin and death, there is, of 
course, nothing to be said; then they are condemned 
already; they are not the children of God. But one 
says, " I wish I could find interest in a serious book, but 
I cannot." Observe again, "Ye cannot do the things 
that ye would," because the flesh and the Spirit are con- 
trary to one another. However, to return to him who 
says this, the answer to him is this, — " The interest cannot 



120 WHICH CHERISHES THOUGHTS OF GOD. 

come without the reading ; it may and will come with it." 
For interest in a subject depends very much on our 
knowledge of it; and so it is with the things of Christ. 
As long as the life and death of Christ are strange to us, 
how can we be interested about them ? but read them, 
thinking of what they were, and what were their ends, and 
who can help being interested about them ? Read them 
carefully, and read them often, and they will bring before 
our minds the very thoughts which we need, and which 
the world keeps continually from us, the thoughts which 
naturally feed our prayers ; thoughts not of self, nor self- 
ishness, nor pleasure, nor passion, nor folly, but of such 
things as are truly God's — love, and self-denial, and 
purity, and wisdom. These thoughts come by reading the 
Scriptures ; and strangely do they mingle at first with the 
common evil thoughts of our evil nature. But they soon 
find a home within us, and more good thoughts gather 
round them, and there comes a time when daily life with 
its various business, which once seemed to shut them out 
altogether, now ministers to their nourishment. 

Wherefore, in conclusion, walk in the Spirit, and ye 
shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh ; but do even the 
things which ye would. And ye can walk in the Spirit, 
if ye seek for the Spirit ; if ye seek him by prayer, and 
by reading of Christ, and the things of Christ. If we 
will do neither, then most assuredly we are not seeking 
him ; if we seek him not, we shall never find him. If we 
find him not, we shall never be able to do the things that 
we would ; we shall never be redeemed, never made free, 
but our souls shall be overcome by their evil natm^e, as 
surely as our bodies by their diseased nature; till one 
death shall possess us wholly, a death of body and of soul, 
the death of eternal misery. 



LECTURE IX. 



Luke xiv. 33. 



Whosoever he be of you that forsaheih not all that he hath, he cannot 
he my disciple. 

In order to show that these words were not spoken to 
the apostles alone, but to all Christians, we have only to 
turn to the 25th and 26th verses, which run thus : — " And 
there went great multitudes with him, and he turned and 
said unto them. If any man come to me, and hate not his 
father and mother, and wife and children, and brethren 
and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my 
disciple." The words were not, then, spoken to the 
twelve apostles only, as if they contained merely some 
rule of extraordinary piety, which was not to be required 
of common Christians ; they were spoken to a great mul- 
titude ; they were spoken to warn all persons in that mul- 
titude that not one of them could become a Christian, un- 
less he gave himself up to Christ body and soul. Thus 
declaring that there is bat one rule for all ; a rule which 
the highest Christian can never go beyond ; and which the 
lowest, if he would be a Christian at all, must make the 
foundation of his whole life. 

Now take the words, either of the text or of the 26th 
verse, and is it possible to avoid seeing that, on the very 
lowest interpretation, they do insist upon a very high 
standard ; that they do require a very entire and devoted 
obedience ? Is it possible for any one who beUeves what 
11 (121) 



122 THE FEW A SAFER GUIDE THAN MANY. 

Christ has said, to rest contented, either for himself or 
for others, with that very low and very unchristian 
standard which he sees and knows to prevail generally in 
the world ? Is it possible for him not to wish, for him- 
self and for all in whose welfare he is interested, that 
they may belong to the small minority in matters of 
principle and practice, rather than to the large majority ? 

And because he so wishes, one who endeavours to 
follow Christ sincerely can never be satisfied with the 
excuse that he acts and thinks quite as well as the mass 
of persons about him ; it can never give him comfort, with 
regard to any judgment or practice, to be told, in common 
language, "Everybody thinks so; everybody does so." 
If, indeed, this expression "everybody " might be taken 
literally ; if it were quite true, without any exception, that 
" everybody thought or did so ;" then I grant that it 
AYOuld have a very great authority ; so great that it would 
be almost a mark of madness to run counter to it. For 
what all men, all without a single exception, were to agree 
in, must be some truth which the human mind could not 
reject without insanity, — like the axioms of science, or 
some action which if we did not we could not live, as 
sleeping and eating ; or if there be any moral point so 
universally agreed upon, then it must be something 
exceedingly general : as, for instance, that truth is in 
itself to be preferred to falsehood ; which to dispute would 
be monstrous. But, once admit a single exception, and 
the infallible virtue of the rule ceases. I can conceive 
one single good and wise man's judgment and practice, 
requiring, at any rate, to be corefully attended to, and 
his reasons examined, although millions upon millions 
stood against him. But go on with the number of excep- 
tions, and bring the expression "everybody," to its real 
mea.ning, which is only "most persons," "the great mnjo- 



DIFFERENCE BETWEEN " MANY " AND "ALL." 123 

rity of the world;" then the rule becomes of no virtue at 
all, but very often the contrary. If in matters of morals 
many are on one side and some on the other, it is 
impossible to pronounce at once which are most likely to 
be right : it depends on the sort of case on which the differ- 
ence exists ; for the victories of truth and of good are but 
partial. It is not all truth that triumphs in the world, 
nor all good ; but only truth and good up to a certain 
point. Let them once pass this point, and their progress 
pauses. Their followers, in the mass, cannot keep up with 
them thus far : fewer and fewer are those who still press 
on in their company, till at last even these fail; and there 
is a perfection at which they are deserted by all men, and 
are in the presence of God and of Christ alone. 

Thus it is that, up to a certain point, in moral matters 
the majority are right ; and thus Christ's gospel, in a 
great many respects, goes along with public opinion, and 
the voice of society is the voice of truth. But this, to use 
the expression of our Lord's parable, this is but half the 
height of that tower whose top should reach unto heaven. 
Christianity ascends a great deal higher ; and therefore so 
many who begin to build are never able to finish. Christ's 
disciples and the w^orld's disciples work for a certain way 
together ; and thus far the world's disciples call themselves 
Christ's, and so Christ's followers seem to be a great ma- 
jority. But Christ warns us expressly that we are not his 
disciples merely by going a certain way on the same road 
with them. They only are His, who follow Him to the 
end. They only are tlis, who follow him in spite of 
everything, w^ho leave all rather than leave him. For 
the rest, He does not ow^n them. What the w^orld can 
give they may enjoy ; but Christ's kingdom is shut against 
them. 

Speaking, then, according to Christ's judgment, and we 



124 THE MIXTURE OF GOOD AND EVIL. 

must hold those to be of the world, and not of Him, — and 
therefore in God's judgment, to be the evil and not the 
good, — who do not make up their minds to live in His 
service, and to refer their actions, "words, and thoughts to 
His will. Who these are it is very true that we many 
times cannot know : only we may always fear that they 
are the majority of society ; and therefore we are rather 
anxious in any individual's case to get a proof that he is 
not one of them, because, as they are very many, there is 
always a sort of presumption that any given person is of 
this number, unless there is some evidence, or some pre- 
sumption at any rate, for thinking the contrary. 

When we speak, then, of the good and of the evil side 
in human life, in any society, whether smaller or larger, 
— this is what we mean, or should mean. The evil side 
contains much that is, up to a certain point, good : the 
good side, — for does it not consist of human beings ? — 
contains, unhappily, much in it that is evil. Not all in 
the one is to be avoided, — far from it ; nor is all in the 
other by any means to be followed. But still those are 
called evil in God's judgment who live according to their 
own impulses, or according to the law of the society around 
them ; and those are to be called good, who, in their 
principles, whatever may be the imperfections of their 
practice, endeavour in all things to live according to the 
will of Christ. 

And in this view the characters of Jacob and Esau are, 
as it seems to me, full of instruction ; and above all to us 
here. For I have often observed that the early age of an 
individual bears a great resemblance to the early age of 
the human race, or of any particular nation ; so that the 
characters of the Old Testament are often more suited, in 
a Christian country, for the instruction of the young than 



ESAU WAS LIKE THE MANY, 125 

for those of more advanced years. To Christian men, 
looking at Jacob's life, with the faults recorded of it, it is 
sometimes strange that he should be spoken of as good. 
But it seems that in a rude state of society, where know- 
ledge is very low, and passion very strong, the great 
virtue is to be freed from the dominion of the prevailing 
low principle, to see and resolve that we ought and will 
live according to knowledge, and not according to passion 
or impulse. The knowledge may be very imperfect, and 
probably is so : the practice may in many respects offend 
against knowledge, and probably will do so : yet is a great 
step taken ; it is the virtue of man, in such a state of 
society, to follow, though imperfectly, principle, where 
others follow instinct, or the opinion of their fellows. It 
is the great distinguishing mark, in such a state of things, 
between the good and the evil ; for this reason, amongst 
many others, that it is the virtue, under such circum- 
stances, of the hardest attainment. 

Now, the Scripture judgment of Jacob and Esau, should 
be in an especial manner the basis of our judgment with 
regard to the young. None can doubt, that amongst the 
young, when they form a society of their own, the great 
temptation is to live by impulse, or according to the 
opinion of those around them. It is like a light breaking 
in upon darkness, when a young person is led to follow a 
higher standard, and to live according to God's will. 
Esau, in his faults and amiable points alike, is the very 
image of the prevailing character amongst boys ; some- 
times violently revengeful, as v>^hen Esau looked forward 
with satisfaction to the prospect of his father's death, 
because then we should be able to slay his brother Jacob ; 
sometimes full of generosity, as when Esau forgot all his 
grounds of complaint against his brother, and received 
11* 



126 BOTH IN HIS GOOD AND HIS EVIL. 

him on his return from Mesopotamia with open arms ; — 
but habitually careless, and setting the present before the 
future, the lower gratification before the higher, as when 
Esau sold his birth-right for a mess of pottage. And the 
point to be noted is, that, because of this carelessness, this 
profaneness or ungodliness, as it is truly called in the New 
Testament, Esau is distinguished from those who were 
God's people ; the promises were not his, nor yet the 
blessing. This is remarkable, because Esau's faults, un- 
doubtedly were just the faults of his age : he was no worse 
than the great majority of those around him ; he lived as 
we should say, in our common language, that it was 
natural for him to live. He had, therefore, precisely all 
those excuses which are commonly urged for the prevail- 
ing faults of boys ; yet it is quite certain that the Scrip- 
ture holds him out as a representative of those who were 
not on the side of God. 

If the Scripture has so judged of Esau and Jacob, it 
must be the model for our judgments of those whose cir- 
cumstances, on account of their belonging to a society 
consisting wholly of persons young in age, greatly 
resemble the circumstances of the early society of the 
world. I lay the stress on the belonging to a society 
wholly formed of young persons ; for the case of young 
persons brought up at home, is extremely different ; and 
their circumstances would be best suited by a different 
scriptural example. But here, with you, I am quite sure 
that the great distinguishing mark between good and evil, 
is the endeavoui'ing, or not endeavouring, to rise above the 
carelessness of the society of which you are members ; the 
determining, or not determining, to judge of things by 
another rule than that of school morality or honour ; the 
trying, or not trying, to please God, instead of those 



OUR TENDENCIES ARE LIKE HIS. 127 

around you : for the notions and maxims of a society of 
young persons are like the notions and maxims of men in 
a half-civilized age, a strange mixture of right and 
wrong ; or rather wrong in their result, although with 
some right feeling in them, and therefore as a guide, false 
and mischievous. That it is natural to follow these 
maxims, is quite obvious : they are the besetting sin of 
your particular condition ; and it is always according to 
our corrupt nature to follow our besetting sin. It is quite 
natural that you should be careless, profane, mistaking 
evil for good, and good for evil ; but salvation is not for 
those who follow their nature, but for those in whom God's 
grace has overcome its evil; it is for those, in Christ's 
language, who take up their cross and follow him ; that is, 
for those who struggle against their evil nature, that they 
may gain a better nature, and be born, not after the flesh, 
but after the Spirit of God. 

What is to be said to this ? or what qualification, or 
compromise, is to be made in it ? The words of the text 
will authorize us, at any rate, to make none : their 
language is not that of indulgent allowance ; but it is a 
call, a loud and earnest, even a severe, call, it may be, in 
the judgment of our evil nature, — to shake off the weight 
that hangs about us ; to deliver our hearts from the 
dominion of that which cannot profit, and to submit them 
to Christ alone. This is God's judgment, this is Christ's 
word ; and we cannot and dare not qualify it. They are 
evil, for God and Christ declare it, who judge and live 
after the maxims of the society around them, and not 
after Christ ; they are evil who are careless ; they are evil 
who live according to their own blind and capricious feel- 
ings, now hot, now cold ; they are evil who call evil good, 
and good evil, because they have not known the Father 



128 

nor Christ. This, and nothing less, we say, lest we 
should be found false witnesses of God : but if this 
language, which is that of Scripture, seem harsh to any 
one, oh ! let him remember how soon he may change it 
into the language of the most abundant mercy, of the 
tenderest love ; that if he calls upon God, God is ready 
to hear ; that if he seeks to know and to do God's will, 
God will be found by him, and will strengthen him ; that 
it is true kindness not to disguise from him his real 
danger, but earnestly to conjure him to flee from it, and 
to offer our humblest prayers to God, for him and our- 
selves, that our judgments and our practice may be formed 
only after his example. 



LECTURE X 



1 Timothy i. 9. 



The law is not tnadefor a rigliteoits man, hut for tlie lawless and dis- 
obedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and 
profane. 

These words explain the meaning of a great many 
passages in St. Paul's Epistles, in which also he speaks of 
the law, and of not being under the law, and other such 
expressions. And it is clear also, that he is not speaking 
solely, or chiefly, or, in any considerable degree, of the 
ceremonial law ; but much more of the law of moral good, 
the law which told men how they ought to live, and how 
they ought not. This law, he says, is not made for good 
men, but for evil : a thing so plain, that we may well 
wonder how any could ever have misunderstood it. It is 
so manifest, that strict rules are required, just exactly in 
proportion to our inability or want of will to rule 
ourselves ; it is so very plain, that, with regard to those 
crimes which we are under no temptation to commit, we 
feel exactly as if there were no law. Which of us ever 
thinks, as a matter of personal concern, of the law which 
sentences to death murderers, or housebreakers, or those 
who maliciously set fire to their neighbours' property ? 
Do we not feel that, as far as our own conduct is 
concerned, it would be exactly the same thing if no such 
law were in existence ? We should no more murder, or 

(129) 



130 THE LAW IS NOT FOR THE GOOD, 

rob, or set fire to houses and barns, if the law were 
wholly done away, than we do now that it is in force. 

There are, then, some points in which we feel practi- 
cally that we are not under the law, but dead to it ; that 
the law is not made for us : but do we think, therefore, 
that we may murder, and rob, and burn ? or do we not 
rather feel that such a notion would be little short of mad- 
ness ? We are not under the law, because we do not need 
it ; not because there is in reality no law to punish us if 
we do need it. And just of this kind is that general 
freedom from the law, of which St. Paul speaks, as the 
high privilege of true Christians. 

But yet St. Paul would not at all mean that any 
Christian is altogether without the law : that is, that 
there are no points at all in which his inclination is not to 
evil, and in which, therefore, he needs the fear of God to 
restrain him from it. When he says of himself, that he 
kept under his body lest that by any means he should 
become a castaway ; just so far as this fear of being a 
castaway possessed him, that is, just so far as there were 
any evil tendencies in him, which required him to keep 
them under by an effort, just so far was he under the 
law. And this is so, as we full well know, with us all ; 
for as there is none of us in whom sin is utterly dead, so 
neither can there be any of us who is altogether dead to 
the law. 

Yet, although this be so, there is no doubt that the 
gospel wishes to consider us as generally dead to the law, 
in order that we really may become so continually more 
and more. It supposes that the Spirit of God, presenting 
to our minds the sight of God's love in Christ, sets us free 
from the law of sin and death ; that is, that a sense of 
thankfulness to God, and love of God and of Christ, will 
be so strong a motive, that we shall, generally speaking, 



so FAR AS THEY ARE GOOD. 131 

need no other ; that it will so work upon us, as to make 
us feel good, easy, and delightful, and thus to become 
dead to the law. And there is no doubt also, that that 
same freedom from the law, which we ourselves experience 
daily, in respect of some particular great crimes, (for, as 
I said, we do not feel that it is the fear of the law which 
keeps us from murder or from robbing,) that very same 
freedom is felt by good men in many other points, where 
it may be that we ourselves do not feel it. A common 
instance may be given with respect to prayer, and the 
outward worship of God. There are a great many who 
feel this as a duty ; but there are many also to whom it is 
not so much a duty, as a privilege and a pleasure ; and 
these are dead to the law which commands us to be 
instant in prayer, just as we, in general, are dead to the 
law which commands us to do no murder. 

This being understood, it will be perfectly plain, why 
St. Paul, alonor with all his lano;ua2;e as to the law beino: 
passed away, and our being become dead to it, yet uses, 
very frequently, language of another kind, which shows 
that the law is not dead in itself, but lives, and ever will 
live. He says, ^^We must all stand before the judg- 
ment seat of Christ, that every one may receive accord- 
ing to what he has done in the body." And he adds, 
" Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade 
men." But the judgment, and the terror of the Lord, 
mean precisely what are meant by the law. And this 
language of St. Paul shows more clearly, that, unless we 
are first dead to the law, the law is not, and never will be 
dead to us. 

I should not have thought it useless, to have offered 
merely this explanation of a language, which is very com- 
mon in the New Testament, which forms one of its charac- 
teristic points, (for St. John's expression of " Perfect love 



132 THE GOSPEL SUCCEEDS TO THE LAW. 

casteth out fear," is exactly equivalent to St. Paul's, 
" That we are dead to the law,") and which has been often 
misunderstood, or misrepresented. But yet I am well 
aware, that mere explanations of Scripture cannot be 
expected to interest those to whom Scripture is not familiar. 
The answer to a riddle would be very soon forgotten, 
unless the riddle had first at once amused and puzzled us. 
Just so, explanations of Scripture, to be at all valued, 
must suppose a previous knowledge of, and desire to under- 
stand, the difficulty ; and this we cannot expect to find in 
very young persons. Thus far, then, what I have said has 
been necessarily addressed, I do not say, or mean, to the 
oldest part of my hearers only, but yet to the older, and 
more considering part of them. But the subject is capable, 
I think, of being brought much more closely home to us ; 
for what St. Paul says of the law, with reference to all 
mankind, is precisely that state of mind which one would 
wish to see here ; and the mistakes of his meaning are just 
such as are often prevalent, and are likely to do great 
mischief, with regard to the motives to be appealed to in 
education. 

Now, what is the case in the Scripture ? Men had been 
subject to a strict law of rewards and punishments, appeal- 
ing directly to their hopes, and to their fears. The gospel 
offered itself to them, as a declaration of God's love to 
them ; so wonderful, that it seemed as though it could not 
but excite them to love him in return. It also raised their 
whole nature ; their understandings, no less than their 
affections ; and thus led them to do God's will, from 
another and higher feeling than they had felt heretofore ; 
to do it, not because they must, but because they loved it. 
And to such as answered to this heavenly call, God laid 
aside, if I may venture so to speak, all his terrors ; he 
showed himself to them only as a loving father, between 



CHILDHOOD IS UNDER TUE LAW. 133 

•wliom and "his children there was nothing but mutual affec- 
tion ; who would be loved by them, and love them forever. 
But to those who answered not to it, and far more, who 
dared to abuse it ; who thought that God's love was weak- 
ness ; that the liberty to which they were called, was the 
liberty of devils, the liberty of doing evil as they would ; 
to all such, God was still a consuming fire, and their most 
merciful Saviour himself was a judge to try their verj' 
hearts and reins ; in short, the gospel was to them, not 
salvation, but condemnation ; it awakened not the better, 
bnt the baser parts of their nature ; it did not do away, 
but doubled their guilt, and therefore brought upon them, 
and will bring through all eternity, a double measure of 
punishment. 

Now all this applies exactly to that earlier and, as it 
were, preparatory life, which ends not in death, but in 
manhood. The state of boyhood begins under a law. It 
is a great mistake to address always the reason of a child, 
when you ought rather to require his obedience. Do this, 
do not do that ; if you do this, I shall love you ; if you do 
not, I shall punish you ; — such is the state, most clearly a 
state of law, under which we are, and must be, placed at 
the beginning of education. But we should desire and 
endeavour to see this state of law succeeded by something 
better ; we should desire so to unfold the love of Christ as 
to draw the affections towards him; we should desire so to 
raise the understanding as that it may fasten itself, by its 
own native tendrils, round the pillar of truth, without 
requiring to be bound to it by external bands. We should 
avoid all unnecessary harshness ; we should speak and act 
with all possible kindness ; because love, rather than fear, 
love both of God and man, is the motive which we par- 
ticularly wish to awaken. Thus, keeping punishment in 
the background and, as it were, out of sight, and putting 
12 



134 YOUTH IX PART OUTGROWS IT. 

forward encouragement and kindness, we should attract, 
as it were, the good and noble feelings of those with whom 
we are dealing, and invite them to open, and to answer to, 
a system of confidence and kindness, rather than risk the 
chilling and hardening them by a system of mistrust and 
severity. 

And for those who do answer to this call, how really 
true is it that they do soon become dead, in great measure, 
to the law of the place where they are living ! How little 
do they generally feel its restraints, or its tasks, burden- 
some ! How very little have they to do with its punish- 
ments ! Led on by degrees continually higher and higher, 
their relations with us become more and more relations of 
entire confidence and kindness ; and when at last their 
trial is over, and they pass from this first life, as I have 
ventured to call it, into their second life of manhood, how 
beautifully are they ripened for that state ! how naturally 
do all the restraints of this first life fall away, like the 
mortal body of the perfected Christian ; and they enter 
upon the full liberty of manhood, fitted at once to enjoy 
and to improve it ! 

But observe, that St. Paul does not suppose even the 
best Christian to be without the law altogether : there will 
ever be some points in which he will need to remember it. 
And so it is unkindness, rather than kindness, and a very 
mischievous mistake, to forget that here, in this our pre- 
paratory life, the law cannot cease altogether with any 
one; that it is not possible to find a perfect sense and 
feeling of right existing in every action ; nay, that it is 
even unreasonable to seem to expect it. Little faults, little 
irregularities, there always will be, with which the law is 
best fitted to deal ; which should be met, I mean, by a 
system of rules and of punishments, not severe, certainly, 
nor one at all inconsistent with general respect, kindness. 



PENALTIES ARE NECESSARY. 135 

and confidence ; but 'R-liich check the particular faults 
alluded to better, I think, than could be done by seeming 
to expect of the individual that he should, in all such cases, 
be a law to himself. There is a possibility of our over- 
straining the highest principles, by continually appealing 
to them on very trifling occasions. It is far better, here, 
to apply the system of the law ; to require obedience to 
rules, as a matter of discipline ; to visit the breach of them 
by moderate punishment, not given in anger, not at all in- 
consistent with general confidence and regard, but gently 
reminding us of that truth which we may never dare 
wholly to forget, — that punishment will exist eternally so 
long as there is evil, and that the only way of remaining 
for ever entirely strangers to it, is by adhering for ever 
and entirely to good. 

This applies to every one amongst us ; and is the 
reason why rules, discipline, and punishments, however 
much they may be, and are, kept in the background for 
such as have become almost wholly dead to them, must 
yet continue in existence, because none are, or can be, 
dead to them altogether. But now, suppose that we have 
a nature to deal with, which cannot answer to a system of 
kindness, but abuses it ; which, when punishment is kept 
at a distance, rejoices, as thinking that it may follow evil 
safely ; a nature not to be touched by the love of God or 
man, not to be guided by any perception of its own as to 
what is right and true. Is the law dead really to such as 
these ? or should it be so ? Is punishment a degradation 
to a nature which is so self-degraded as to be incapable of 
being moved by anything better ? For this is the real 
degradation which we should avoid ; not the fear of 
punishment, which is not at all degrading, but the being 
insensible to the love of Christ and of goodness ; and so 
being capable of receiving no other motive than the fear 



136 THERE ALSO IS PUNISHMENT. 

of punisliiTicnt alone. With such natures, to withhold 
punishment, would be indeed to make Christ the minister 
of sin ; to make mercy, that is, lead to evil, and not to 
good. For them, the law never is dead, and never will 
he. Here, of course, in this first life, as I have called it, 
punishment indeed goes but a little way : it is very easy 
for a hardened nature to defy all that could be laid upon 
it here in the way of actual compulsion. Our only 
course is to cut short the time of trial, when we find a 
nature in whom that trial cannot end in good. Still there 
may be those in whom this life here, like their greater life 
which shall last for ever, will have far more to do with 
punishment than with kindness ; they will be living all 
their time under the law. Continue this to our second 
life, and the law then will be no less alive, and they will 
never be dead to it, nor will it be ever dead to them. And 
however a hardened nature may well despise the jDunish- 
ments of its first life, — punishments, whose whole object 
is correction, and not retribution, — yet, where is the 
nature so hard as to endure, in its relations with God, to 
feel more of his punishment than of his mercy ; to know 
him for ever as a God of judgment, and not as a Father 
of love ? 



LECTURE XI 



St. Luke xxi. 36. 



Watch ye, therefore, and pray always, that ye may he accounted 
worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to 
stand before the Son of Man. 

This might be a text for a history of the Christian 
Church from its foundation to this hour, or to the latest 
hour of the world's existence. We might observe how it 
had fulfilled its Lord's command ; with what steadiness it 
had gone forward on its course, with the constant hope of 
meeting Him once again in glory. We might see how it 
had escaped all these things that were to come to pass : 
tracing its course amidst the manifold revolutions of the 
world,' inward and outward. In the few words, " all these 
things that shall come to pass," are contained all the 
events of the last eighteen hundred years : indistinct and 
unknown to us, as long as they are thus folded up to- 
gether ; but capable of being unrolled before our eyes in 
a long order, in which should be displayed all the outward 
changes of nations, the spread of discovery, the vicissi- 
tudes of conquest ; and yet more, the inward changes of 
men's minds, the various schools of philosophy, the suc- 
cessive forms of public opinion, tjie influences of various 
races, all the manifold elements by which the moral 
character of the Christian world has been affected. We 
might observe how the Church had escaped all these 
things, or to what degree it had received from any of 
12* (137) 



138 THE VARIED COURSE OF THE CHURCH, 

them good or evil. And then, stopping at the point at 
-vvhich it has actually arrived, we might consider how far 
it deserves the character of that Church, " without spot, 
or wrinkle, or any such thing," which should be presented 
before the Son of Man at his coming again. 

This would be a great subject ; and one, if worthily 
executed, full of the deepest instruction to us all. But our 
Lord's words may also be made the text for a history or 
inquiry of another sort, far less comprehensive in time and 
space, far less grand, far less interesting to the under- 
standing ; yet, on the other hand, capable of being 
wrought out far more completely, and far more interest- 
ing to the spiritual and eternal welfare of each of us. 
They may be made the text for an inquiry into the course 
hitherto held, not by the Church as a body, but by each 
of us individual members of it ; an inquiry how far we, 
each of us, have watched and prayed always, that we 
might be accounted worthy to escape all the things which 
should come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man. 
And, in this view of the words, the expression " all these 
things which shall come to pass " has reference no longer 
to great political revolutions, nor to schools of philosophy, 
nor to prominent points of national character ; but to 
those humbler events, to those lesser changes, outward 
and inward, through which we each pass between our 
cradle and our grave. How have we escaped these, or 
turned them to good account ? Have earthly things so 
ministered to our eternal welfare, that if we were each one 
of us, by a stroke from heaven, cut off at that very point 
in our course to which we have severally attained this day, 
we should be accounted worthy to stand before the Son 
of Man ? 

Here is, indeed, a very humble history for us each to study ; 
yet what other history can concern us so nearly ? And 



AND OF EACH OF US SEPARATELY. 139 

as, in the history of the world, experience in part supplies 
the place of prophecy, and the fate of one nation is in a 
manner a mirror to another, so in our individual history, 
the experience of the old is a lesson to the middle-aged, 
and that of the middle-aged a lesson to the young. If you 
wish to know what are the things which shall come to pass 
with respect to you, we can draw aside the veil from your 
coming life, because what you will be is no other than 
what we are. If we would go onwards, in like manner, 
and ask what are the things which shall come to pass 
with respect to us, our coming life may be seen in the 
past and present life of the old ; for what we shall 
be is no other than what they have been, or than what 
they are. 

Let us take, then, the actual moment with each of us, 
and suppose that our Lord speaks to each of us as he did 
to his first disciples : " Watch and pray always, that ye 
may be accounted worthy to escape all these things which 
shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.'* 
We ask, naturally, " What are the things which shall come 
to pass ?" and it is to this question that I am to try to 
suggest the answer. 

Those arrived at middle age may ask the question, 
"What are the things which shall come to pass to us?" 
Now, setting aside extraordinary accidents, on which we 
cannot reckon, and the answer would, I think, be some- 
thing of this sort : There will not come to pass, it is likely, 
any great change in our condition or employment in life. 
In middle age our calling, with all the duties which it 
involves, must generally be fixed for each of us. Oiu' par- 
ticular kind of trial will not, it is probable, be much 
altered. We must not, as in youth, fancy that, although 
our actual occupation does not suit us, although its 
temptations are often too strong for us, yet a change may 



140 WHAT WILL COME TO PASS TO US, 

take place to another line of duty, and the temptations in 
that new line may be less formidable. In middle age it 
will not do to indulge such fond hopes as these. On the 
contrary, our hope must lie, not in escape, but in victory. 
If our temptations press us hard, we cannot expect to have 
them exchanged for others less powerful : they will 
remain with us, and we must overcome them, or perish. 
Have we tastes not fully reconciled to our calling, — 
faculties which seem not to have found their proper field ? 
We must seek our remedy not from without, humanly 
speaking, but from within : we must discipline ourselves ; 
we must teach our tastes to cling gracefully around that 
duty to which else they must be helplessly fastened. If 
any faculties appear not to have found their proper field, 
we must think that God has, for certain wise reasons, 
judged it best for us that they should not be exercised ; 
and we must be content to render him the service of 
others. In this respect, then, the immediate prospect for 
middle age is not so much change as steadfastness. 
Fortune will not suit herself to our wishes : we must 
learn to suit our wishes to her. 

But go on a little farther, and what are the things 
which must come to pass then ? A new and most solemn 
interest arising to us in the entrance of our children into 
active life. Hitherto they have lived under our care, and 
our duty to them was simple ; but now there comes the 
choice of a profession, the watching and guiding them, as 
well as we can, at this critical moment of their course. 
What cares await us here ; and yet what need of avoiding 
over care ! What a trial for us, how we value our 
children's worldly interests when compared with their 
eternal — whether we prefer for them the path which may 
lead most readily to worldly wealth and honour, or that in. 
which they may best and safest follow Christ ! This is a 



IN ADVANCED YEARS, 141 

danger which will come to pass to us ere long : do we 
watch and pray that we may be delivered from it ? 

The interest of life, which had, perhaps, something 
begun to fade for ourselves, will revive with vigour at this 
period in behalf of our children ; but after this it will go 
on steadily ebbing. What life can offer we have tasted 
for ourselves ; we have seen it tasted, or in the way to be 
tasted, by them. The harvest is gathered, and the symp- 
toms of the fall appear. Is it that some faculty becomes 
a little impaired, some taste a little dulled ; or is it that 
the friends and companions of our life are beginning to 
drop away from us ? Long since, those whom we loved 
of the generation before us have been gathered to the 
grave ; now those of our own generation are falling fast 
also — brothers, sisters, friends of our early youth, a wife, 
a husband. We are surrounded by a younger generation, 
to whom the half of our lives, with all their recollections 
and sympathies, are a thing unknown. Impatience, 
weariness, a clinging to the past, a vain wish to prolong it 
in an earthly future, — these are the things which shall 
befal us then : and they will befal us too surely, and too 
irresistibly, unless, by earlier watchfulness and prayer, we 
may have been enabled to avoid them. For vain will it 
be, with faculties at once weakened by the decay of nature 
and perverted by long habits of worldliness, to essay, for 
the first time, to force our way into the kingdom of heaven. 
Old age is not the season for contest and victory ; nor 
shall we then be so able to escape unharmed from the 
temptations of life as to stand before the Son of Man. 

These are the things which will come to pass for us and 
for you. But for you there is much more to come, which 
to us is not future now, but past or present. With you, 
for a time, it will be all a course forwards and upwards. 
From the preparation for life, you will come to the reality ; 



142 IN OPEXIXG MANHOOD, 

from a state of less importance, you will be passing on to 
one of greater. Your temptations, whatever they may be 
now, will not certainly become weaker. As outward re- 
straint is more and more taken off from j'ou, so your need 
of inward restraint will be greater. Will those who are 
extravagant now on a small scale, be less extravagant on 
a large scale ? Will those who are selfish now, become 
less selfish amidst a wider field of enjoyment ? Will those 
w^ho know not or care not for Christ, while yet, as it 
were, standing quietly on the shore, be led to think of him 
more amidst the excitement of the first setting sail, 
amidst the interest of the first newly-seen country ? 

You know not .yet, nor can know, the immense im- 
portance of that period of life on which many of you are 
entering, or have just entered. You are coming, or come, 
to what may be called the second beginning of life : to 
which, in the common course of things, there will succeed 
no third. Ignorance, absence of temptation, the presence 
of all good impressions, constitute much of the innocence 
of mere childhood, — so beautiful while it lasts, so sure to 
be soon blighted ! It is blighted in the first experience 
of life, most commonly when a boy first goes to school. 
Then his mere innocence, which indeed he may be said to 
have worn rather instinctively than by choice, becomes 
grievously polluted. Then come the hardness, the coarse- 
ness, the intense selfishness ; sometimes, too, the false- 
hood, the cruelty, the folly of the boy : then comes that 
period, so trying to the faith of parents, when all their 
early care seems blasted ; when the vineyard, which they 
had fenced so tenderly, seems all despoiled and trodden 
under foot. It is indeed a discouraging season, the exact 
image of the ungenial springs of our natural year. But 
after this there comes, as it were, a second beginning of 
life, when principle takes the place of innocence. There 



WHICH IS A SECOND BEGINNING OF LTFF. 143 

is a time, — many of you must have arrived at it, — when 
thought and inquiry awaken ; when, out of the mere chaos 
of boyhood, the elements of the future character of the 
man begin to appear. Blessed are they for whom the con- 
fusion and disarray of their boyish life is quickened into 
a true life by the moving of the Spirit of God ! Blessed 
are they for whom the beginnings of thought and inquiry 
are the beginnings also of faith and love ; when the new 
character receives, as it is forming, the Christian seed, and 
the man is also the Christian. And, then, this second 
beginning of life, resting on faith and conscious principle, 
and not on mere passive innocence, stands sure for the 
middle and the end : those who so watch and pray as to 
escape out of this critical period, not merely unharmed, 
but, as it were, set clearly on their way to heaven, will, 
with God's grace, escape out of the things which shall 
befal them afterwards, till they shall stand before the Son 
of Man. 

But the word is, "Watch and pray always, that ye may 
be accounted worthy to escape." We see the time with 
many of you come, or immediately coming ; out of your 
present state a character will certainly be formed; as 
surely as the innocence of childhood has perished, so surely 
will the carelessness of boyhood perish too. A character 
will be formed, whether you watch and pray, or whether 
you do neither ; but the great point is what this character 
may be. If you do not watch the process, it will surely 
be the character of death eternal. Thought and inquiry 
will satisfy themselves very readily with an answer as far 
as regards spiritual things : their whole vigour will be 
devoted to the things of this world, to science or to busi- 
ness, or to public matters, all alike hardening rather than 
softening to the mind, if its thoughts do not go to some- 
thing higher and deeper still. And as years pass on, we 



144 TO STAND BEFORE THE SON OF MAN. 

may think on these our favourite or professional subjects 
more and more earnestly ; our views on them may be 
clearer and sounder, but there comes again nothing like 
the first free burst of thought in youth ; the intellect in 
later life, if its tone was not rightly taken earlier, becomes 
narrowed in proportion to its greater vigour ; one thing it 
sees clearly, but it is blind to all beside. It is in youth 
that the after tone of the mind is happily formed, when 
that natural burst of thought is sanctified and quickened 
by God's Spirit, and we set up within us to love and adore, 
all our days, the one image of the truth of God, our 
Saviour Jesus. • Then, whatever else may befal us after- 
wards, it rarely happens that our faith will fail ; his image, 
implanted in us, preserves us amid every change ; we are 
counted worthy to escape all the things which may come 
to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man. 



LECTURE XII 



Proverbs i. 28. 

Tlien shall they call upon me, hut I will not answer ; they shall seek 
me early, hut they shall not Jind me. 

Christ's gospel gives out the forgiveness^of sins ; and 
as this is its very essence, so also in Trhat we read con- 
nected with Christ's gospel, the tone of encouragement, of 
mercy, of loving-kindness to sinners, is ever predominant. 
What was needed at the beginning of the gospel is no less 
needed now ; we cannot spare one jot or one tittle of this 
gracious language ; now, as ever, the free grace, that most 
seems to be without the law, does most surely establish the 
law. But yet there is another language, which is to be 
found alike in the Old Testament and in the New ; a lan- 
guage not indeed so common as the language of mercy, but 
yet repeated many times ; a language which we also need 
as fully as it was ever needed, and of whose severity we 
can no more spare one tittle than we can spare anything 
of the comfort of the other. And yet this language has 
not, I think, been enforced so often as it should have been. 
Men have rather shrunk from it, and seemed afraid of it ; 
they have connected it sometimes with certain foolish and 
presumptuous questions, which we, indeed, do well to turn 
from; but they have not seen, that with such it has no 
natural connexion, but belongs to a certain fact in the 
constitution of our nature, and is most highly moral and 
practical. 

13 (145) 



146 SEEMING CONTRADICTIONS OF SCRIPTURE. 

The language to wliicli I allude is expressed, amongst 
other passages, bv the Tvord ^ of the text. They speak of 
men's calling upon God, and of his refusing to hear them ; 
of men's seeking God, and not finding him. Remember, 
at the same time, our Lord's words, " Ask, and ye shall 
receive ; seek, and ye shall find." I purposely put together 
these opposite passages, because the full character of God's 
Revelation is thus seen more <;learly. Do we doubt that 
our Lord's words are true, and do we not prize them as 
some of the most precious which he has left us ? We do well 
to do so ; but shall we doubt any more the truth of the 
words of the text ; and shall we not consider them as a warn- 
ino: no less needful than the comfort in the other case? 
Indeed, as true as it is, that, if we seek God, we shall find 
him ; so true is it that we may seek him, and yet not find 
him. 

Now, then, how to explain this seeming contradiction ? 
"U'e can see at once, that these things are not said of the 
same persons, or rather of the same characters at the same 
time. They are said of the same persons : that is, there 
is no one here assembled who is not concerned with both, 
and to whom both may not be applicable. Only they are 
not and cannot be both applicable to the same person at 
the very same time. If God will be found by us, at any 
given moment, on our seeking him, it is impossible that, at 
that same moment, he should also not be found. Thus 
far is plain to every one. 

And now, is it true of us, at this present time, that 
God will be found by us if we seek him, or that he will 
not be found ? If we say that he will be found, then the 
words of the text are not applicable to us at pre33nt, 
-althouirh at some future time they may be ; and then we 
have that well-known difficulty to encounter, to attempt to 
draw the mind's attention to a future and only contingent 



EACH TRUE OF DIFFERENT PERSONS. 147 

evil. If we say that he will not be found, then of what 
avail can it be to say any word more ? why sit we in this 
place, to preach, or to listen to preaching, if God, after all, 
will not be found ? Or, again, should we say that there 
are some by whom he will not be found, then who are they 
that are thus horribly marked out from among their 
brethren ? Can we dare to conceive of any one amongst 
us that he is such an one ; that there are some, nay, that 
there is any one amongst us, to whom it is the same thing 
whether he will hear, or whether he will forbear ; who may 
close his ears as safely as open them, because God has 
turned his face from him for ever ? It were indeed 
horrible to suppose that any one of us were in such a 
state ; and happily it is a thought of horror which the 
truth may allow us to repel. 

But what, if I were to say, that now, at this very 
moment, the words of the text are both applicable to us, 
and not applicable ? Is this a contradiction, and therefore 
impossible ? or is it but a seeming contradiction only, and 
not only possible, but true ? Let us see how the case 
appears to be. 

Yfe should allow, I suppose, that the words of the text 
were at no time in any man's earthly life so true as they 
will be at the day of judgment. The hardest heart, the 
most obdurate in sin, the most closed against all repent- 
ance, is yet more within the reach of grace, we should 
imagine, whilst he is alive and in health, than he will be 
at the day of the resurrection. We can admit, then, that 
the words of the text may be true, in a greater or less 
degree ; that they will be more entirely true at the last 
day, than at any earlier period, but yet that they may be 
substantially true, true almost beyond exception, in the 
life that now is. Now carry this same principle a little 
farther, and we come to our very own case. The words 



148 IN SOME SENSE, BOTH ARE TRUE. 

of the text will be more true at the clay of judgment, than 
they ever are on earth ; and yet on earth they are often 
true substantially and practically. And even so, they may 
be more true to each of us a few years hence, than they 
are at this moment ; and yet, in a certain degree, they 
may be true at this moment ; true, not absolutely and 
entirely, but partially ; so true as to give a most solemn 
earnest, if we are not warned in time, of their more entire 
truth hereafter, — first, in this earthly life ; then most 
perfectly of all, when we shall arise at the last day. 

It may be, then, that the words of the text, although 
not applicable to us in their full and most fatal sense, may 
yet be applicable to us in a certain degree : the evil which 
they speak of may be, not wholly future and contingent, 
and a thing to be feared, but present in part, actual, and 
a matter of experience. This is not contradiction : it is 
not impossible ; it may he our case. Let us see whether 
it really is so, that is, whether it is in any degree true of 
us, that when vfe call upon God he will not answer ; that 
when we seek him, we shall in any manner be unable to 
find him. 

It is manifest that, in proportion as Christ's words 
^' Seek, and ye shall find," are true to any man, so are 
the words of the text less true to him ; and in proportion 
as Christ's w^ords are less true to any one, so are the words 
of the text more true to him. Now, is Christ's promise, 
"Seek, and ye shall find," equally true to all of us? 
Conceive of one — the thing is rare, but not impossible, — 
of one who had been so kept from evil, and so happily led 
forward in good, that when arrived at boyhood, his soul 
had scarcely more stain upon it than when it was first 
fully cleansed, and forgiven, in baptism ! Conceive him 
speaking truth, without any effort, on all occasions ; not 
g]-ccdy, not proud, not violent, not selfish, not feeling 



149 

conscious that he was living a life of sin, and therefore 
glad to come to God, rather than shrinking away from 
him ! Conceive how completely to such an one would 
Christ's w^ords be fulfilled, " Seek, and ye shall find !" 
When w ould his prayers be unblessed or unfruitful ? 
When would he turn his thoughts to God without feeling 
pleasure in doing so; without a lively conciousness of 
God's love to him; without an assured sense of the reality 
of things not seen, of redemption and grace and glory ? 
Would not the communion with God, enjoyed by one so 
untainted, come up to the full measure of those high 
promises, " It shall come to pass, that before they call, I 
will answer, and while they are yet speaking, I will 
hear ?" Would it not be plain, that God was as truly 
found, by such a person, as he was sought in sincerity and 
earnestness ? 

But now, take the most of us : suppose us not to have 
been kept carefully from evil, nor led on steadily in good ; 
suppose us to have reached boyhood with bad dispositions, 
ready for the first temptation, with habits of good uncul- 
tivated ; suppose us to have no great horror of a lie, w^hen 
it can serve our turn ; with much love of pleasure, and 
little love of our duty ; with much selfishness, and little or 
no thought of God : suppose such an one, so sadly altered 
from a state of baptismal purity, to be saying his prayers 
as he had been taught to say them, and saying them some- 
times with a thought of their meaning and a wish that God 
would hear them. But does God hear them? I ask of 
your own consciences, whether you have had any sense 
that he has heard you? whether death and judgment, 
Christ and Christ's service, have become more real to you 
after such prayers ? If not, then is it not manifest, that 
you have sought God, and have not found him; that you 
have called upon him and he has not heard ? You know 
13* 



150 WHO PRAY, AND ARE NOT HEARD. 

by experience, that you are not as those true children who 
are ever with him, who listen to catch the lightest whisper 
of his Spirit, for whom he, too, vouchsafes to bless the 
faintest breathing of their prayer. 

Or, again, in trying to turn from evil to good, have you 
ever found your resolutions give way, the ground which 
you had gained slide from under your feet, till you fell 
back again to what you were at the beginning? Has this 
ever happened to us ? If it has, then in that case, also, 
we sought God, but failed to find him ; the victory was 
not yours, but the enemy's ; the Spirit of Christ did not 
help you so as to conquer. 

Take another case yet again. Has it ever happened to 
any of you, to have done a mischief to yourselves which you 
could not undo ? It need not be one of the very highest 
kind ; but has it ever happened, that, by neglect, you have 
lost ground in the society in which you are placed, which 
you cannot recover ; that your contemporaries have gained 
an advance upon you, while you have not time left to 
overtake them ? Does it ever happen that, from neglect- 
ing some particular element of learning in its proper 
season, and other things claiming your attention after- 
wards, you go on with a disadvantage, which you would 
fain remove, but cannot ? Does it, in short, ever happen 
to any, that his complete success here is become impossible ; 
that whatever prospects of another kind may be open to 
him elsewhere, yet that he cannot now be numbered 
amongst those who have turned the particular advantages 
here afforded them to that end which they might and ought 
to have done? 

To whomsoever this has happened, the truth of the 
words of the text is matter of experience, not in their full 
and most dreadful extent, but yet quite enough to prove 
that they are true ; and that just as he now feels them in 



WHO HAVE ERRED BEYOND REMEDY. 151 

part, SO, if he continues to be what he is, he will one day- 
feel them wholly. He feels that it is possible to seek God, 
and not to find him ; he has learnt by experience that 
neglected good, or committed evil, may be beyond the 
power of after-regret to undo. It is true, that as yet, to 
him, other prospects may be open : prospects w^hich, pro- 
bably, he may deem no less fair than those which he has 
forfeited. This may be so ; but the point to observe is, 
that one prospect was lost so irretrievably by his own fault, 
that afterwards, when he wished to regain it, he could not. 
Now God gives him other prospects, which he may realize : 
but as he forfeited his first prospect beyond recovery, so 
he may do also with his last : and though ill-success at 
school may be made up by success in another sphere, yet 
what is to make up for ill-success in the great business of 
life, when that, too, has been forfeited as irrecoverably ; 
when his last chance is gone as hopelessly as his first ? 

Now, surely there is in all this an intelligible lesson. I 
am not at all exaggerating the importance of the particular 
prospect forfeited here : but I am pressing upon you, that 
this prospect may be, and often is, forfeited irrecoverably ; 
that when you wish to regain it, it is too late, and you 
cannot. And I press this, because it is a true type of the 
whole of human life ; because it is just as possible to for- 
feit salvation irrecoverably, as to forfeit that earthly good 
which is the prize of well-doing here, with this infinite 
difference, that the last forfeit is not only irretrievable, 
but fatal ; it can no more be made up for, than it can be 
regained. Here, then, your present condition is a type of 
the complete truth of the text : but there are other points, 
to which I alluded before, in which it is more than a type ; 
,it is the very truth itself, although, happily, only in an 
imperfect measure. That unanswered prayer, of vrhich I 
spoke, those broken resolutions, — are they not actually a 



152 PERSEVERE IN PRAYER. 

calling on God, "without his hearing us; a seeking him, 
without finding him ? "VVe remember who it was that 
could say with truth to his Father, " I know that thou 
hearest me always." We know what it is that hinders God 
from hearing us always ; because we are not thoroughly 
one in his Son Christ Jesus. But this unanswered prayer 
is not properly the State of Christ's redeemed : it is an 
enemy that hath brought us to this ; the same enemy who 
will, in time, make all our prayers to be unanswered, as 
some are now ; who will cause God, not only to be slow to 
listen, but to refuse to listen for ever. Now we are not 
heard at once, we must repeat our prayers, with more and 
more earnestness, that God, at last, may hear, and may 
bless us. But if, instead of repeating them the more, we 
do the very contrary, and repeat them the less ; if, because 
we have no comfort, and no seeming good from them, we 
give them up altogether ; then the time will surely come 
when all prayer will be but the hopeless prayer of Esau, 
because it will be only the prayer of fear ; because it will 
be only the dread of destruction that will, or can, move 
us : — the love of good will have gone beyond recall. Such 
prayer does but ask for pardon without repentance ; and 
this never is, or can be, granted. 

So then, in conclusion, that very feeling of coldness, 
and unwillingness to pray, because we have often prayed 
in vain, is surely working in us that perfect death, which 
is the full truth of the words of the text. Of all of us, 
those who the least like to pray, who have prayed with the 
least benefit, have the most need to pray again. If they 
have sought God, without finding him, let them take heed 
that this be not their case for ever ; that the truth, of 
which the seed is even now in them, may not be ripened 
to their everlasting destruction, when all their seeking, 
and all their prayer, will be as rejected by God, as, in 
part, it has been already. 



LECTURE XIIT 



Mark xii. 34. 
TTiou art not far from the Idngdom of God. 

Whoever has gone up any Mil of more than common 
height, may remember the very different impression which 
the self-same point, whether bush, or stone, or cliff, has 
made upon him as he viewed it from below and from 
above. In going up it seemed so high, that we fancied, if 
we were once arrived at it, we should be at the summit of 
our ascent ; while, when we had got beyond it, and looked 
down upon it, it seemed almost sunk to the level of the 
common plain ; and we wondered that it could ever have 
appeared high to us. 

What happens with any natural object according to the 
different points from which we view it, happens also to any 
particular stage of advancement in our moral characters. 
There is a goodness which appears very exalted or very 
ordinary, according as it is much above or much below our 
own level. And this is the case with the expression of our 
Lord in the text, " Thou art not far from the kingdom of 
God." Does this seem a great thing or a little thing to 
be said to us ? Does it give us a notion of a height which 
vf e should think it happiness to have reached ; or of a state 
so little advanced, that it would be misery to be forced to 
go back to it? For, according as it seems to us the one 
or the other, so we may judge of the greater or less pro- 

(153) 



154 DIFFERENT SENSES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

gress wliich ■\Ye have made in ascending the holy mountain 
of our God. 

But while I say this, it is necessary to distinguish 
between two several senses, in which we may be said to be 
near to the kingdom of God, or actually in it. These two 
are in respect of knowledge, and in respect of feeling and 
practice. And our Lord's words seem to refer particu- 
larly to knowledge. The scribe to whom he used them, 
had expressed so just a sense of the true way of pleasing 
God, had so risen above the common false notions of his 
age and country, that his understanding seemed to be ripe 
for the truths of that kingdom of God, which was to 
make the worship of God to consist in spirit and in truth. 
Now^ as far as the knowledge of the kingdom of God is 
concerned, although, undoubtedly, there are many amongst 
us who are deficient in it, yet it is true also, that a great 
many of us are in possession of it ; we are familiar 
enough with the truths of the kingdom of God, and our 
understandings fully approve them. But we may be near 
to or far from the kingdom of God, in respect also of 
feeling and practice ; and this is the great matter that 
concerns us. It is here, then, that we should ask ourselves 
what we think of our Lord's words in the text; and 
whether he to whom they were spoken appears to us an 
object of envy or of compassion; one whom we envy for 
having advanced so far, or pity for not being advanced 
further. 

"Not far from the kingdom of God." Again, if we 
take the words Kingdom of God in their highest sense, 
then the expression contains all that we could desire to 
have said of us in this life ; hope itself on this side of the 
grave can go no higher. For as, in this sense, the king- 
dom of God cannot be actually entered before our death ; 
so the best thing that can be said of us here, is, that we 



ITS LOWEST SENSE. 155 

are not far from it ; but -we are in the land of Beulah, so 
happily imagined in the Pilgrim's Progress; all of our 
pilgrimage completed, save the last act of crossing the 
river ; with the city of God full in sight, and with hearts 
ready to enter into it. In this sense, even St. Paul him- 
self, when he wrote his last epistle from Rome, could say 
no more, could hope for, could desire no more, than to be 
not far from the kingdom of God. 

Yet again, take the words "Kingdom of God" in their 
lowest sense, and then it is woe to us all, if the expression 
in the text is all that can be said of us ; if, in this sense, 
we are only not far from the kingdom of God. For take 
the kingdom of God as God's visible Church, and then, if 
we are not Christians at all, but only not far from becom- 
ing so ; if we have not received Christ, but are not far 
from receiving him ; this is a state so imperfect, that he 
who is in it, has not yet reached to the beginning of his 
Christian course ; and we need not say how far he must 
be from its end, if he have not yet come as far as its 
beginning. 

Thus, in one sense, the words express something so high 
that nothing can be higher ; in another, something so low, 
that, to us, nothing can be lower. We have yet to seek 
that sense, in which they may afford us a useful criterion 
of our own several states, by appearing high, perhaps, to 
some of us, and to others low. 

The sense which we seek is given by our Lord, when he 
declares that the kingdom of God is within us ; or by St. 
Paul, when he tells us, that it is righteousness, peace, and 
joy in the Holy Ghost. And now it is no more a thing 
which we cannot yet have reached, or, on the other hand, 
which we all have reached : there is now a great difference 
in us, some are far from it, some are near it, and some 
are in it ; and thus it is, that they who are near it, seem 



156 ITS SENSE TO US PRACTICALLY. 

in it to those wlio are afar oil, and far from it to those 
who are in it. 

Now, first, do they seem far from it ? Then, indeed, 
ours is a happy state, as many of us as can truly feel that 
they live so constantly in holy and heavenly tempers, in 
such lively faith and love, so tasting all the blessings of 
God's kingdom, its peace, and its hope, and its joy, that 
they cannot bear to think of that time, when these bless- 
ings were not enjoyed except in prospect ; when they 
rather desired to have faith and love, than could be said 
actually to have them ; when their tempers were not holy 
and heavenly, although they were fully alive to the excel- 
lence of their being so, and had seen them already 
cleansed from the opposites of such a state, from ill- 
nature, and passion, and pride. 

If any such there be, in whom good resolutions have 
long since ripened into good actions, and the continued 
good actions have now led to confirmed good habits, how 
miserable will they think it to be only " not far from the 
kingdom of God !" How ill could they bear to go over 
again the struggle which used to accompany every action, 
when it was done in defiance of habits of evil ; or to be 
called back to that condition when resolutions for good 
were formed over and over again, because they were so 
often broken, but had as yet rarely led to any solid fruit ! 
How thankful will they be to have escaped from that 
season when they were seeking, but had not yet found ; 
when they were asking of God, but had not yet received ; 
when they were knocking, but the door had not yet been 
opened ! They were then, indeed, not far from the king- 
dom of God, but they were still without its walls ; they 
were still strangers, and not citizens. It had held out to 
them a refuge, and they had fled to it as suppliants to the 
sanctuary ; but they had not yet had the word of peace 



THOSE WHO ARE NEAR IT. 157 

spoken, to bid them no more kneel without, as suppliants, 
but to enter and go in and out freely ; for that all things 
were theirs, because they were Christ's. 

I have dwelt purposely somewhat the longer upon this, 
because the more that we can feel the truth of this picture, 
the more that we can put ourselves into the position of 
those who are within the kingdom of God, and who, living 
in the light of it, look back with pity upon those who are 
only kneeling without its gates, — the more strongly we 
shall feel what must be our condition, if those who are 
without its gates appear to us to be objects of envy rather 
than pity, because they are so near to that place from 
which we feel ourselves to be so distant. Or, to speak 
without a figure, if we could but understand how persons 
advanced in goodness would shrink from the thought of 
being now only resolving to be good, then we shall per- 
ceive how very evil must be our condition, if this very re- 
solving to be good seems to us to be an advance so desir- 
able ; if we are so far from being good actually, that the 
very setting ourselves in earnest to seek for good strikes 
us as a point of absolute proficiency in comparison of our 
present degradation. 

Yet is not this the case with many of us ? Do we not 
consider it a great point gained, if we can be brought to 
think seriously, to pray in earnest, to read the Bible, to 
begin to look to our own ways and lives ? We feel it for 
ourselves, and others also feel it for us : it is natural, it 
is unavoidable, that we feel great joy, that we think a 
great deal is done, if we see any of you, after leading a 
life of manifest carelessness, and therefore of manifest sin, 
beginning to take more pains with himself, and so becom- 
ing what is called somewhat more steady and more serious. 
I know that the impression is apt to be too strong upon us : 
we are but too apt to boast for him who putteth on his 
14 



158 

armour as for him wlio putteth it off; because lie who 
puttetli on his armour at least shows that he is preparing 
for the battle, which so many never do at all. We 
observe some of these signs of seriousness : we see 
perhaps, that a person begins to attend at the Commu- 
nion ; that he pays more attention to his ordinary duties ; 
that he becomes more regular. We see this, and we are 
not only thankful for it, — this we ought to be,— but we 
satisfy ourselves too readily that all is done : we reckon a 
person, somewhat too hastily, to be already belonging to 
the kingdom of God, because we have seen him turning 
towards it. Then, if he afterwards does not appear to be 
entered into it ; if "we see that he is not what we expected, 
that he is no longer serious, no longer attentive to his 
common duties, we are overmuch disappointed ; and, perhaps 
are tempted too completely to despair for him. Is it not 
that we confounded together the beginning and the end ; 
the being good, and the trying to become so : the resolution 
with the act ; the act with the habit ? Did we not forget 
that he is not at once out of dano^er who bearins to mend : 
that the first softening of the dry burning skin, the first 
abating of the hard quick pulse, is far removed from the 
coolness, and steadiness, and even vigour of health restored, 
or never interrupted ? 

But what made us forget truths so obvious ? What 
made us confound things so different that the most 
ignorant ought to be able to distinguish them ? Cannot 
we tell why it is ? Is it not because there are so many in 
whom we cannot see even as good signs as these, — of 
whom we cannot but feel that it would be a great advance 
for them, a matter of earnest thankfulness, if we could 
only see that they were not far from the kingdom of God, 
— nay, even that their steps were tending thither ? Let 
us look ever so earnestly, let us watch ever so'carefuJly, 



BECAUSE OTHERS ARE NOT EVEN NEAR IT. 159 

let US hope ever so charitably, we cannot see, we can 
scarcely fancy that we see, even the desire to turn to God. 
We do not see gross wickedness ; it is well ; we see much 
that is amiable ; that is well also r but the desire to turn 
to God, the tending of the steps towards the kingdom of 
heaven, — that we cannot see. But this is a thing, it may 
be said, that man cannot see : it may exist, although we 
cannot perceive it. Oh, that it might and may be so ! 
Yet, surely, as out of the abundance of the heart the 
mouth speaketh, so a principle so mighty as the desire of 
turning to God cannot leave itself without a witness : 
some symptoms must be shown to those who are eagerly 
watching for them ; some ground for hope must be afforded 
where hope is so ready to kindle. If no sign of life 
appears, can the life indeed be stin-ing ? And if the life 
be not stirring ; if the disorder is going on in so many 
cases, raging, with no symptom of abatement ; is it not 
natural, that when we do see such symptoms, we should 
rejoice even with over-measure, that we should forget how 
much is yet to be done, when we see that something has 
been done. 

To such persons, it would be an enviable state, to be 
not far from the kingdom of God. But what, then, must 
be their state actually ? A hopeful one, according to 
many standards of judgment ; a state that promises well, 
it may be, for a healthy and prosperous life, with many 
friends, perhaps with much distinction. We know that all 
this prospect may be blighted ; still it exists at present ; 
— the healthy constitution, the easy fortune, the cheerful 
and good-humoured temper, the quickness and power of 
understanding ; all these, no doubt, are hopeful signs for a 
period of forty, or fifty, or perhaps sixty years to come. 
But what is to come then ? what is the prospect for the 
next period, not of fifty, or sixty, not of a hundred, not of 



160 HAPPIXESS NEAR THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

a thousand, years ; not of any number that can be num- 
bered, but of time everlasting ? Is their actual state one 
of hopeful promise for this period, for this life which no 
death shall terminate ? Nay, is it a state of any promise 
at all, of any chance at all ? Suppose, for a moment, one 
with a crippled body, full of the seeds of hereditary 
disease, poor, friendless, irritable in temper, low in under- 
standing ; suppose such an one just entering upon youth, 
and ask yourselves, for what would you consent that his 
prospects should be yours ? What should you think would 
be your chance of happiness in life, if you were beginning 
in such a condition ? Yet, I tell you that poor, diseased, 
irritable, friendless cripple has a far better prospect of 
passing his fifty, or sixty, years, tolerably, than they who 
have not begun to turn towards God have of a tolerable 
eternity. Much more wretched is the promise of their life ; 
much more justly should we be tempted, concerning them, 
to breathe that fearful thought, that it were good for them 
if they had never been born. And now if, as by miracle, 
that cripple's limbs were to be at once made sound, if the 
seeds of disease were to vanish, if some large fortune were 
left him, if his temper sweetened, and his mind became 
vigorous, should not we be excused, considering what he 
had been and what he now was, if we, for a moment, for- 
got the uncertainty of the future ; if we thought that a 
promise so changed, was almost equivalent to perform- 
ance ? And may not this same excuse be urged for some 
over-fondness of confidence for their well-doing whom we 
see so near to the kingdom of God, when we consider how 
utter is the misery, how hopeless the condition of those 
who do not appear to have, as yet, stirred one single step 
towards it ? 



LECTURE XIV, 



Matthew xxii. 14. 

For many are called, hut few are cJiosen. 

The truth here expressed is one of the most solemn in 
the world, and would be one of the most overwhelmincr to 
us, if habit had not, in a manner, blunted our painful per- 
ception of it. There is contained in it matter of thought 
more than we could exhaust, and deeper than we could 
ever fathom. But on this I will not attempt to enter. I 
will rather take that view of the text which concerns us 
here ; I will see in how many senses it is true, and with 
what feeling we should regard it. 

"Many are called, but few are chosen." The direct 
application of this was to the parable of those invited to 
the supper ; in which it had been related, how a great 
multitude had been invited, but how one among them — 
and the application as well as the fact in human life, 
require that this one should be taken only as a specimen 
of a great number — had been found unworthy to enjoy the 
feast prepared for them. They had not on the wedding 
garment ; they had not done their part to fit themselves 
for the offered blessing : therefore they were called, but 
not chosen. God had willed to do them good, but they 
would not ; and therefore, though he had called them at 
the beginning, he, in the end, cast them out. 

We have to do, then, not with an arbitrary call and an 
arbitrary choice, as if God called many in mockery, mean- 

14* (ion 



162 THE CALLED AND THE CHOSEN. 

ing to choose out of tliem only a few, and making his 
choice independently of any exertion of theirs. The pic- 
ture is very different ; it is a gracious call to us all, to 
come and receive the blessing ; it is a reluctant casting out 
the greatest part of us, because we would not try to render 
ourselves fit for it. 

I said, that we would take the words of the text in 
reference to ourselves, for here, too, it is true, that many 
are called, but few are chosen. It is a large number of 
you, which I see before me ; and if we add to it all those 
who, within my memory, have sat in the same places before 
you, we shall have a number very considerable indeed. 
All these have been called ; they have been sent here to 
enjoy the same advantages with each other ; and those 
advantages have been put within their reach. They have 
entered into a great society which, on the one hand, might 
raise them forward, or, on the other, depress them. There 
has been a sufficient field for emulation : there have been 
examples and instructions for good; there have been 
results of credit and of real improvement made attainable 
to them, which might have lasted all their lives long. To 
this, they have been all, in their turns, called ; and out of 
those so called, have all, or nearly all, been chosen ? I 
am not speaking of those, who, I trust, would be a very 
small number, to whom the trial has failed utterly, who 
could look back on their stay here with no feelings but 
those of shame. But would there not be a very large 
number, to whom their stay here has been a loss, com- 
pared with what it might have been ; who have reaped but 
a very small part of those advantages to which they had 
been at first called ? Are there not too many who must 
look back on a part, at least, of their time here as wasted ; 
on the seeds of bad habits sown, which, if conquered by 
after-care, yet, for a long time, were injurious to them? 



WHO ARE CALLED IN A LOWER SENSE. 163 

Are there not too many who carry away from here, in- 
stead of good notions, to be ripened and improved, evil 
notions, to be weeded out and destroyed ? Are there not, 
in short, a great number who, after having had a great 
advantage put within their reach, and purchased for them 
by their friends, at a great expense, have made such in- 
sufficient use of their opportunities, to say nothing stronger, 
as to make it a question afterwards, whether it might not 
have been better for them had they never come here at 
all? 

Thus far I have been speaking of what are called the 
advantages of this place in our common language. That 
argument, which Butler has so nobly handled, in one of 
the greatest works in our language, the resemblance, 
namely, between the course of things earthly and that of 
things spiritual, is one which we should never fail to notice. 
We can discern the type, as it were, of the highest truth 
of our Lord's sayings in the experience of our common life 
in worldly things. '\Yhen he tells us, speaking of things 
spiritual, that " many are called, but few are chosen ;" that 
^' whoso hath, to him shall be given ; but from him that hath 
not shall be taken away even that which he hath," — although 
the highest truth contained in these words be yet, in part, 
matter of faith, for we have not yet seen the end of God's 
dealings with us : yet what we do see, the evident truth of 
the words, that is, in respect to God's dealings with us in 
the course of his earthly providence, may reasonably assure 
us of their truth no less in respect to those dealings of God 
which as yet are future. I began, therefore, with remind- 
ing you of the truth of the words of the text with regard 
to worldly advantages ; that even here, on this small scale, 
the general law holds good; that more things are pro- 
vided for us than we will consent to use ; that, in short, 
"many are called, but few are chosen." 



164 WHO ARE CHOSEN. 

But it were ill done to limit our view to this : we are 
called to much more than worldly advantages ; and what 
if here, too, we add one more example to confirm our 
Lord's words, that " many are called, but few chosen ?" 
Now here, as I said, it is very true that God's choice is as 
yet not a matter of sight or of certainty to us ; we can- 
not yet say of ourselves, or of any other set of living 
men, that " few are chosen." But though the full truth 
is not yet revealed, still, as there is a type of it in our 
worldly experience, so there is also a higher type, an 
earnest, of it in our spiritual experience : there is a sense, 
and that a very true and a very important one, in which 
we can say already, say now, actually, in the life that now 
is ; say, even in the early stage of it, that some are, and 
some are not, "chosen." 

We have all been called, in a Christian sense, inasmuch 
as we have been all introduced into Christ's church by 
Baptism; and a very large proportion of us have been 
called again, many of us not very long since, at our Con- 
firmation. We have been thus called to enter into Christ's 
kingdom : we have been called to lead a life of holiness 
and happiness from this time forth even for ever. Nothing 
can be stronger than the language in which the Scripture 
speaks of the nature of our high calling: "All things," 
says St. Paul to the Corinthians, " all things are yours ; 
whether Paul, or ApoUos, or Peter, or the world, or life, 
or death, or things present, or things to come, all are 
yours; and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." Now, 
if this be the prize to which we are called, who are they 
who are also chosen to it ? In the first and most complete 
sense, no doubt, those w^ho have entered into their rest ; 
who are in no more danger, however slight; w^ith whom 
the struggle is altogether past, and the victory securely 
won. These are entered within the veil, whither we can 



WHO ARE CHOSEN. 165 

as yet penetrate only in hope. But hope, in its highest 
degree, differs little from assurance ; and even, as we de- 
scend lower and lower, still, where hope is clearly predo- 
minant, there is, if not assurance, yet a great encourage- 
ment ; and the Scripture, which delights to carry en- 
couragement to the highest pitch to those who are follow- 
ing God, allows of our saying of even these that they are 
God's chosen. It gives them, as it were, the title before- 
hand, to make them feel how doubly miserable it must be 
not only not to obtain it, but to forfeit it after it had been 
already ours. So then, there are senses in which we may 
say that some are chosen now; although, strictly speak- 
ing, the term can by us be applied, in its full sense, to 
those only who are passed beyond the reach of evil. 

Those, then, we may call chosen, who, having heard 
their call, have turned to obey it, and have gone on fol- 
lowing it. Those we may call chosen, — I do not say 
chosen irrevocably, but chosen now; chosen so that we 
may be very thankful to God on their behalf, and they 
thankful for themselves, — who, since their Confirmation, 
or since a period more remote, have kept God before 
their face, and tried to do His will. Those are, in the 
same way, chosen, who having found in themselves the sin 
which did most easily beset them, have struggled with it, 
and wholly, or in a great measure, have overcome it. 
Thus, they are chosen, who, having lived either in the 
frequent practice of selfish extravagance, or of falsehood, 
or of idleness, or of excess in eating and drinking, have 
turned away from these things, and, for Christ's sake, 
have renounced them. They are chosen, I think, in yet 
a higher sense, who, having found their besetting sin to 
be, not so much any one particular fault, as a general un- 
godly carelessness, a lightness which for ever hindered 
them from serving God, have struggled with this most 



166 WHO ARE CHOSEN. 

fatal enemy ; and, even in youtla, and health, and happi- 
ness, have learnt what it is to he soher-minded, what it is 
to think. Now, such as these have, in a manner, entered 
into their inheritance ; they are not merely called, but 
chosen. God and spiritual things are not mere names to 
them, they are a reality. Such persons have tasted of 
the promises ; they have known the pleasure — and what 
pleasure is comparable to it ? — of feeling the bonds of evil 
passion or evil habit unwound from about their spirit ; 
they have learnt what is that glorious liberty of being 
able to abstain from the things which we condemn, to do 
the things which we approve. They have felt the sense 
of power succeed to that of weakness. It is a delightful 
thing, after a long illness, after long helplessness, when 
our legs have been unable to support our weight, when our 
arms could lift nothing, om- hands grasp nothing, when it 
was an effort to raise our head from the pillow, and it 
tired us even to speak in a whisper, — it is a delightful 
thing to feel every member restored to its proper strength ; 
to find that exercise of limb, of voice, of body, which had 
been so long a pain, become now a source of perpetual 
pleasure. This is delightful ; it pays for many an hour 
of previous weakness. But it is infinitely more delightful 
to feel the change from weakness to strengthen our souls ; 
to feel the languor of selfishness changed for the vigour 
of benevolence ; to feel thought, hope, faith, love, which 
before were lying, as it were, in helplessness, now bound- 
ing in vigorous activity ; to find the soul, which had been 
so long stretched as upon the sick bed of this earth, now 
able to stand upright, and looking and moving steadily 
towards heaven. 

These are chosen ; and they to whom this description 
does in no degree apply, they are not chosen. They are 
not chosen in any sense, they are called only. And, now, 



WHO ARE NOT CHOSEN. 167 

Tvliat is the proportion between the one and the other ; are 
there as many chosen as there have been many called ? 
Or do Christ's words apply in our case no less than in 
others ; that though they who are called are many, yet 
they who are chosen are few ? 

This I dare not answer ; there is a good as well as an 
evil which is unseen to the world at large, unseen even by 
all but those who watch us most nearly and most narrowly. 
All we can say is, that there are too many, who we must 
fear are not chosen ; there are too few, of whom we can 
feel sure that they are. Yet hope is a wiser feeling than 
its opposite ; it were as wrong as it would be miserable to 
abandon it. How gladly would we hope the best things 
of all those whom we saw this morning at Christ's holy 
table ! How gladly would we believe of all such, that 
they were more than called merely ; that they had 
listened to the call : that they had obeyed it ; that they 
had already gained some Christian victories ; that they 
were, in some sense, not called only, but chosen. But 
this we may say ; that hope which we so long to enter- 
tain, that hope too happy to be at once indulged in, you 
may authorize us to feel it ; you may convert it into con- 
fidence. Do you ask how ? By going on steadily in good, 
by advancing from good to better, by not letting impres- 
sions fade with time. Now, with many of you, your 
confirmation is little more than three months distant; 
when we next meet at Christ's table, it will have passed by 
nearly half-a-year. It may be, that, in that added 
interval, it will have lost much of its force ; that, from 
various causes, evil may have abounded in you more than 
good ; that then shame, or a willing surrender of your- 
selves to carelessness, will keep away from Christ's Com- 
munion, many who have this day joined in it. But, if 
this were not to be so ; if those, whom we have seen with 



168 HOW THEY CAN BECOME CHOSEN. 

joy tills day communicating with us in the pledges of 
Christian fellowship, should continue to do so steadily ; 
if, in the meantime, traits shall appear in you in other 
things that our hope was well founded ; if the hatred of 
evil and the love of good were to be clearly manifest in 
you ; if by signs not to be mistaken by those who watch 
earnestly for them, we might be assured that your part 
was taken, that you were striving with us in that service 
of our common Master, in which we would fain live and 
die ; if evil was clearly lessened among us — not laughed 
at, but discouraged and put down ; if instead of those 
turning away, who have now been with us at Christ's 
table, others, who have now turned away, should then be 
added to the number ; then we should say, not doubtingly, 
that you were chosen : that you had tasted of the good 
things of Christ ; that the good work of God was clearly 
begun in you. We might not, indeed, be without care, 
either for you or for ourselves : God forbid, that, in that 
sense, any of us should deem that we were chosen, until 
the grave has put us beyond temptation. But how 
happy were it to think of you as Christ's chosen, in that 
sense which should be a constant encouragement to us all : 
to think of you as going on towards God ; to think of you 
as living to him daily ; to think of you as on his side 
against all his enemies ; to think of you as led by his 
Spirit, as living members of his holy and glorious Church, 
— militant now, in heaven triumphant ! 



LECTURE XY. 



Luke xi. 25. 
Wlien he cometJi, liejindeili it swept and garnished. 

John v. 42. 

Tknow you, that ye have not the love of God in you. 

These passages, of wHcli tlie first is taken from the 
gospel of this morning's service, the other from the 
second lesson, differ in words, but their meaning is very 
nearly the same. The house which was empty, swept 
and garnished, was especially one empty of the love of 
God. Whatever evil there may not have been in it; 
whatever good there may have been in those of whom 
Christ spoke in the second passage: yet it and they 
agreed in this; one thing they had not, which alone 
was worth all the rest besides ; they had not the love of 
God. 

And so it is still ; many are the faults which we have 
not ; many are the good qualities which we have ; but the 
life is wanting. What is so rare as to find one who is not 
indifferent to God? What so rare, even rarer than the 
other, as to find one who actually loves him ? 

Therefore it is that those who go in at the broad gate of 
destruction are many, and those who go in at the narrow 
gate of life are few. For destruction and life are but 
15 (109) 



170 THE SOUL EMPTY OF LOVE TO GOD. 

other terms for indifference to God on tlie one hand, and 
love to him on the other. All who are indifferent to him, 
die ; a painless death of mere extinction, if, like the brute 
creation, thej have never been made capable of loving 
him ; or a living death of perpetual misery, if, like evil 
spirits and evil men, they might have loved him and would 
not. And so all who love him, live a life, from first to 
last, without sin and sorrow, if, like the holy angels, they 
have loved him always ; a life partaking at first of death, 
but brightening more and more unto the perfect day, if, 
like Christians, they were born in sin, but had been re- 
deemed and sanctified to righteousness. 

Whoever has watched human character, whether in the 
young or the old, must be well aware of the truth of this : 
he will know that the valtie of any character is in propor- 
tion to the existence or to the absence of this feeling, or 
rather, I should say, this principle. An exception may, 
perhaps, be made for a small, a very small number of 
fanatics ; an apparent exception likewise exists in the 
case of many who seem to be religious, but who really are 
not so. The few exceptions of the former case are so very 
few, that we need not now stop to consider them, nor to 
inquire how far even these would be exceptions if we could 
read the heart as God reads it. The seeming exceptions 
being cases either of hypocrisy, or of very common self- 
deceit, we need not regard either ; for they are, of course, 
no real objection to the truth of the general statement. It 
remains true, then, generally, that the value of any char- 
acter is in proportion to the existence, or to the absence, 
in it of the love of God. 

But is there not another exception to be made for the 
case of children, and of very young persons ? Are they 
capable of loving God ? and are not their earthly relations, 
their parents especially, put to them, as it were, in tlie 



CAN CHILDREN LOVE GOD? 171 

place of God, as objects of trust, of love, of honour, of 
obedience, till their minds can open to comprehend the 
love of their Father who is in heaven ? And does not the 
Scripture itself, in the few places in which it seems directly 
to address cLildren, content itself with directing them to 
obey and honour their parents ? Some notions of this sort 
are allowed, I believe, to serve sometimes as an excuse, 
when young persons are blamed for being utterly wanting 
in a sense of duty to God. 

The passages which direct children to obey their parents, 
are of the same kind with those, directing slaves to obey 
their masters, and masters to be kind to their slaves ; like 
those, also, which John the Baptist addressed to the sol- 
diers and publicans : in none of all which there i^ any 
command to love God, but merely a command to fulfil that 
particular duty which most arose out of the particular 
relation, or calling of the persons addressed. In fact, 
when parents are addressed, they are directed only to do 
their duties to their children, just as children are directed 
to do theirs to their parents ; in both cases alike, the com- 
mon duty of parents and children to God is not dwelt 
upon, because that is a duty which does not belong to them 
as parents, or as children, but as human beings ; and as 
such, it belongs to all alike. In fact, the very language 
of St. Paul's command to children implies this ; for he 
says, " Children, obey your parents in the Lord : for this 
is right:" rig-it, that is, in the sight of God: so that the 
very reason for which children are to discharge their 
earthly duties is, because that earthly duty is commanded 
by, or involved in, their heavenly duty ; if they do not do 
it, they will not please God. But it is manifest that, in this 
respect, there is for all of us one only law, so soon as we are 
able to understand it. The moment that a child becomes 
capable of understanding anything about God and Christ, 



172 ALL CAN, WHO ARE NOT INFANTS. 

— and how early that is, every parent can testify, — that 
moment the duty to love God and Christ begins. It were 
absurd to say, that this duty has not begun at the age of 
boyhood. A boy is able to understand the force of reli- 
gious motives, as well as he can that of earthly motives : 
he cannot understand either, perhaps, so well as he will 
hereafter ; but he understands both enough for the purposes 
of his salvation ; enough to condemn him before God, if he 
neglects them ; enough to make him derive the greatest 
benefit from faithfully observing them. 

And what can have been the purpose with which the 
only particular of our Lord's early life has been handed 
down to us, if it wfere not to direct our attention to this 
special truth, that our youth, no less than our riper age, 
belongs to God ? " Wist ye not that I must be about my 
Father's business?" were words spoken by our Lord when 
he was no more than twelve years old. At twelve years 
old, he thought of preparing himself for the duties of his 
after-life ; and of preparing himself for them, because 
they were God's will. He was to be about his Father's 
business. This is Christ's example for the young ; this, 
and scarcely anything more than this, is recorded of his 
early years. Those are not like Christ who, at that same 
age, or even older, never think at all of the business of 
their future lives, still less would think of it, not as the 
means of their own maintenance or advancement, but as 
the duty which they owe to God. 

Such as these are the very persons whose hearts are 
like the house in the parable, empty, swept, and garnished. 
The house so described in the parable is one out of which 
an evil spirit has just departed. In case of the young, 
the evil spirit in this sense, that is, as representing some 
one particular favourite sin, may perhaps have never 
entered it. That empty, swept, and garnished house, how 



THE END0WME>;TS OF OUR TABERNACLE. 173 

like is it to wliat I have seen, to wliat I am seeing so con- 
tinually, ^Yllen a boy conies here with much still remaining 
of the innocence of childhood ! Evil spirit, in the sense 
of any one particular vice, there is none to be found in 
that heart, nor has there been any ever. It is empty, 
swept, and garnished : there is the absence of evil ; there 
are the various faculties, the furniture, as they may be 
called, of the house of our spirits, which the spirit uses 
either for evil or for good. There is innocence, then ; 
there is, also, the promise of power. God hath richly en- 
dowed th« earthly house of our tabernacle : various and 
wonderful is the furniture of body and mind with which it 
is supplied. How can we help admiring that open and 
cheerful brow which, as yet, no care or sin has furrowed ; 
those light and active limbs, full of health and vigour • 
the eye so quick ; the ear so undulled ; the memory so 
ready ; the young curiosity so eager to take in new know- 
ledge ; the young feelings, not yet spoiled by over>excite- 
ment, ready to admire, ready to love ? There is the 
house, the house of God's building, the house which must 
abide for ever ; but where is the spirit to inhabit it ? Evil 
spirit there is none : is it, then, possessed by the Spirit of 
God ? Has the fire from heaven as yet descended upon 
that house, — the living sign of God's presence, which 
alone can convert the house of perishable clay into the 
everlasting temple ? 

Can that blessed Spirit of God be indeed there, and yet 
no sign of his presence be manifest ? It may be so, or to 
speak more truly, it might have been supposed to be so, if 
God's word had not declared the contrary. What God's 
secret workings are ; in how many ways, to us inscrutable, 
he may pervade all nature ; in how many cases he may be 
near us, and we know it not ; may, perhaps, be amongst 
those real mysteries, those truths revealed to none, nor to 
15* 



174 BUT ANOTHER SPIRIT WILL 

be revealed ; those yet uncleared forests, so to speak, of 
the world of nature, into which the light of grace has not 
been permitted to penetrate. But all such mysteries are 
to us as if they did not exist at all : we have nothing to 
do with them. God has told us nothing of his unseen and 
undiscernible presence ; when and where he is so present, 
he is to us as if he were not present at all. God was in 
the wilderness of Horeb before the bush was kindled ; but 
he was not there for Moses. God, in some sense discer- 
nible, it may be, to other beings, may be in that house 
which to us is empty ; but God, our own God, the Holy 
Spirit, into whose service we were baptized, where he is, 
the house is not empty to us, but full of light. Invisible 
in himself, the signs of his presence are most visible : 
where no w^orks, no fruits of the Holy Spirit are to be dis- 
cerned, there, according to our Lord's express declaration, 
there the Holy Spirit is not. 

But the light which declares his presence may indeed be 
a little spark ; just to be seen, and no more. It may 
show that he has not abandoned all his right to the house 
of our tabernacle as yet ; that he would desire to possess 
us fully. Such a little spark, such an evidence of the 
Holy Spirit's presence, is to be found in the outward pro- 
fession of Christianity. They who call Jesus Lord, do it 
by the Holy Ghost ; and, therefore, it is quite true in this 
sense, that in every baptized Christian, who has not utterly 
apostatized, there is that faint sign of the Holy Spirit's 
still having a claim upon him ; he is not yet utterly cast 
off. This is true ; but it is not to our present purpose ; 
such a feeble sign is a sign of God's yet unwearied mercy, 
but no sign of our salvation. The presence with which 
the parable is concerned, is a far more effectual presence 
than this ; the house in which there is no more than such 
a faint sign of a divine inhabitant, is, in the language of 



ENTER AND DWELL TUERE. 175 

the parable, empty. To no purpose of our salvation is 
the Spirit of God present in the house, when the light of 
his presence does not flash forth from every part of it, 
when it is not manifest, not only that he has not quite cast 
it off to go to ruin, but that he has been pleased to make 
it his temple. 

In this sense, therefore, in this practical, scriptural. 
Christian sense, those many young minds, which we have 
seen so often, may truly be called empty. But will they 
remain so long ? How often have I seen the early inno- 
cence of boyhood overcast ; the natural simplicity of boy- 
hood, its open truth, its confident affection, its honest 
shame, perverted, blunted, hardened ! How often have I 
seen the seven evil spirits enter in and dwell there, — I 
know not, and never may know, whether to be cast 
out again, or to abide for ever. But I have seen them 
enter, and, whilst the person was yet within my view, I 
have not seen them depart. And why have they entered ; 
why have they marred that which was so beautiful ? For 
one only reason, — because the house was empty, because 
the Spirit of God was not there : there was no love of 
God, no thought of God^ Mere innocence taints and 
spoils as surely before the influence of the world, as true 
principle flourishes in spite of it, and strengthens. This, 
too, I have seen, not once only : I have seen the innocence 
of early boyhood sanctified by something better than in- 
nocence, which gave a promise of abiding. I have seen, 
in other words, that the house was not empty ; that the 
Spirit of God was there. I have watched the effect of 
those influences, which you know so well : the second half- 
year came, a period when mere innocence is sure to be 
worn away, greatly tainted, if not utterly gone; but still, 
in the cases Avhich I am now alluding to, the promise of 
good was not less, but greater, there was a more tried-, 



iib SIGNS OF THE EVIL SPIRITS. 

and, therefore, a stronger goodness. I have watched this, 
too, till it passed on, out of my sight. I never saw the 
blessed Spirit of God depart from the house which he had 
chosen : I well believe that he abides in it still, and will 
abide in it even to the day of Jesus Christ. 

This I have seen, and this I shall continue to see ; for 
still the great work of evil and of good is going on ; still 
the house, at first empty, is possessed by the spirits of 
evil, or by the Spirit of God. And if we do not see the 
signs of the Spirit of God, we are but too sure that 
the evil spirit is there. We know him by the manifold 
signs of folly, carseness, carelessness ; even when we see 
not, as yet, his worse fruits of falsehood and profligacy. 
We know him by the sign of an increased, and increasing 
selfishness, the everlasting cry of the thousand passions 
of our nature, all for ever calling out, "Give, give;" all 
for ever impatient, complaining, when their gratification is 
withheld, when the call of duty is set before them. We 
know him by pride and self-importance, as if nothing was 
so great as self, as if our own opinions, judgment, feelings 
were to be consulted in all things. We know him by the 
deep ungodliness which he occasions — no thought of God, 
much less any love of him ; tiving utterly without him in 
the world, or, at least, whilst health and prosperity con- 
tinue. These are the fatal signs which show that the 
house is no longer empty; that the evil spirits have 
entered in, and dwell there, to make it theirs, as too often 
happens, for time and for eternity. 



LECTURE XYI. 



Mathew xi. 10. 



/ send my messenger before thy face, who shall pi^epare thy way 
before thee. 

If it was part of God's dispensation, that there should 
be one to prepare the way before Christ's first coming, it 
may be expected much more, that there should be some 
to prepare the way before his second. And so it is 
expressed in the collect for the third Sunday in Advent : 
" Lord Jesus Christ, who at thy first coming didst send 
thy messenger to prepare thy way before thee ; grant that 
the ministers and stewards of thy mysteries may likewise 
so prepare and make ready thy way, by turning the hearts 
of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, that at thy 
second coming to judge the world we may be found an 
acceptable people in thy sight, who livest and reignest 
with the Father and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world 
without end. Amen." Now, in what does this preparing 
for him consist ; and what is its object ? The Scripture 
will inform us as to both. The object is, "Lest he come 
and smite the earth with a curse ; " lest, when he shall 
come, his coming, which should be our greatest joy and 
happiness, should be our everlasting destruction; for 
there can abide before him nothing that is evil. This is 
the object of preparing for Christ's coming. Next, in 
what does the preparation consist ? It consists in teach- 

(177) 



178 TO BE BETTER THAX ME2T IN GENERAL, 

inor men to live nbove the common notions of their a^e 
and country ; to raise their standard higher ; to live after 
what is right in God's judgment, which often casts away, 
as faulty and bad, what men were accustomed to think 
good. And as the people of Israel, although they had 
God's revelation among them, had yet let their standard 
of good and evil become low, even so it has been in tho 
Christian Israel. We have God's will in our hands, yet 
our judgments are not formed upon it; and, therefore, 
they who would prepare us for Christ's coming, must set 
before us a commandment which is new, although old : in 
one sense old, in every generation, inasmuch as it is the 
same which we had from the beginning ; in another sense, 
in every generation more new, inasmuch as the habits 
opposed to it have become the more confirmed ; and the 
longer the night has lasted, the more strange to our eyes 
is the burst of the returning light. 

But when we thus speak of the common notions of our 
age and country being deficient, and thus, in efi'ect, 
commend notions which would be singular, do we not 
hold a language inconsistent with our common language 
and practice ? Do we not commonly regard singularity as 
a fault, and attach a considerable authority to the consent 
of men in general ? Nay, do we not often appeal to this 
consent as to a proof which a sane mind must admit as 
decisive ? Even in speaking of good and evil, have not 
the very words gained their present sense because the 
common consent of mankind has agreed to combine 
notions of self-satisfaction, of honour, and of love, with 
what we call good, and the contrary with what we call 
evil ? 

A short time may, perhaps, not be misapplied in 
endeavouring to explain this matter ; in showing where, 
and for what reasons, the common opinion of our society 



WHEKE CONSENT MAY BE TRUSTED. 1T9 

is to be followed, where it is to be suspected, and where it 
is absolutely to be shunned or trampled under foot, as 
clearly and certainly evil. 

I must begin with little things, in order to show the 
whole question plainly. Take those tastes in us which 
most resemble the instincts of a brute ; and you will find 
that in these, as with instinct, common consent becomes a 
sure rule. TThen I speak of those tastes which most 
resemble instincts, I mean those in which nature, doing 
most for us at first, leaves least for us to learn for our- 
selves. This seems the character of instinct : it is far 
more complete than reason in its first stage, but it admits 
of no after improvement; the brute in the thousandth 
generation is no way advanced beyond the brute in the 
first. Of our tastes, even of those belonging to our 
bodily senses, that which belongs to what are called 
particularly our organs of taste is the one most resem- 
bling an instinct : we have less to do for its improvement 
than in any other instance. Men being here, then, upon 
an equality, with a faculty given to all by nature, and 
improved particularly by none, those who difier from the 
majority are likely to difi'er not from excellence but from 
defect : not because they have a more advanced reason, 
but because they have a less healthy instinct, than their 
neighbours. Thus, in those matters which relate to the 
sense of taste — I am obliged to take this almost trivial 
instance, because it so well illustrates the principle of the 
whole question — we hold the consent of men in general to 
be a good rule. If any one were to choose to feed upon 
what this common taste had pronounced to be disgusting, 
we should not hesitate to say that such an appetite was 
diseased and monstrous. 

IN'ow, let us take our senses of sight and hearing, and 
we shall find that just in the proportion in which these 



180 CONSENT MAY BE TRUSTED, 

less resemble instincts tlian the sense of taste, so is com- 
mon consent a less certain rule. Up to a certain point 
they are instincts : there are certain sounds which, I sup- 
pose, are naturally disagreeable to the ear ; while, on the 
other hand, bright and rich colours are, perhaps, naturally 
attractive to the eye. But, then, sight and hearing are so 
connected with our minds that they are susceptible of very 
great cultivation, and thus differ greatly from instincts. 
As the mind opens, outward sights and sounds become 
connected with a great number of associations, and thus 
we learn to think the one or the other beautiful, for reasons 
which really depend very much on the range of our own 
ideas. Consider, for a moment, the beautiful in architect- 
ure. If the model of the leaning tower of Pisa were 
generally adopted in our public buildings, all men's com- 
mon sense would cry out against it as a deformity, because 
a leaning wall would convey to every mind the notion of 
insecurity, and every body would feel that it was un- 
pleasant to see a building look exactly as if it were going 
to fall down. Now, what I have called common sense is, 
in a manner, the instinct of our reason : it is that uniform 
level of reason which all sane persons reach to, and the 
wisest in matters within its province do not surpass. But 
go beyond this, and architecture is no longer a matter of 
mere common sense, but of science, and of cultivated taste. 
Here the standard of beauty is not fixed by common con- 
sent ; but, in the first instance, devised or discovered by 
the few : and, so far as it is received by the many, received 
by them on the authority of the few, and sanctioned, so to 
speak, not so much from real sympathy and understanding, 
as from a reasonable trust and deference to those who are 
believed the best judges. 

Here, then, we suppose that the common judgment is 



WHEN MEX WISH TO FIXD THE TRUTH. 181 

riglit ; but we perceive a difference between this case and 
the one mentioned before, inasmuch as in the first instance 
the right judgment of the mass of mankind is their own ; 
in the second instance, they have adopted it out of defer- 
ence to others. Not only, then, will men's common judg- 
ment be right in matters of instinct and of common sense, 
but also in higher matters, where, although they could not 
have discovered what was right, yet they were perfectly 
willing to adopt it, when discovered by others. And this 
opens a very wide field. For in all matters which come 
under the dominion of fashion, where the avowed object is 
the convenience or gratification of society, men listen to 
those who profess to teach them with almost an excess of 
docility : they will adopt sometimes fashions which are not 
convenient. But yet, as men can tell well enough by 
experience whether they do find a thing convenient and 
agreeable or not, so it is most likely that fashions which 
continue long and generally prevalent are founded upon 
sound principles ; because else men, being well capable of 
knowing what convenience is, and being also well disposed 
to follow it, would neither have been very long or very 
generally mistaken in this matter ; nor would have acqui- 
esced in their mistake contentedly. 

We do perfectly right, then, to regard the common 
opinion as a rule in all points of dress, in our houses and 
furniture, in those lighter usages of society which come 
under the denomination of manners, as distinguished from 
morals. In all these, if the mass of mankind could not 
find out what would best suit them, yet they are quite ready 
to adopt it when it is found out ; and so they equally 
arrive at truth. But take away this readiness, and the 
whole case is altered. If there be any point in which men 
are not ready to adopt what is best for them ; if they are 
16* 



182 TEE PKACTICE OF THE MAJORITY 

either indiifcrent, or still more, if thej are averse to it ; if 
they thus have neither the power of discovering it for 
themselves, nor the will to avail themselves of it, when 
discovered for them ; then it is clear that, in such a point, 
the common judgment will be of no value, nay, there will 
even be a presumption that it is wrong. 

Now as the common consent of mankind was most sure 
in matters where their sense most resembled instinct, that 
is, where nature had done most for them, and left them 
least to do for themselves ; as here, therefore, they who 
are sound are the great majority, and the exceptions are 
no better than disease ; so if there be any part of us which 
is the direct opposite to instinct, a part in which nature 
has done next to nothing for us, and all is to be done by 
ourselves ; then, here the common consent of mankind 
will be of the least value; here the majority will be help- 
less and worthless ; and they who are happy enough to be 
exceptions to this majority, will be no other than Christ's 
redeemed. 

Now, again, if this deficient part of our nature could be 
seen purely distinct from every other ; if it alone dictated 
our language, and inspired our actions, then it would 
follow, that language which must ever be fixed by the 
majority, would be, in fact, the language of the world of 
infinite evil ; and our actions those of mere devils. Then, 
whoever of us would be saved, must needs begin by for- 
swearing, altogether, both the language and the actions 
of his fellow-men. But this is not so; in almost every 
instance this deficient part of our nature acts along with 
others that are not so corrupted; it mars their work, 
undoubtedly ; it often confuses and perverts our language ; 
it always taints our actions ; but it does not wholly usurp 
either the one or the other ; and thus, by God's blessing, 



BY NO MEANS A SURE GUIDE. 18B 

man's language yet affords a high witness to divine truth, 
and even men's judgments and actions testify, though with 
infinite imperfection, to the existence and excellence of 
goodness. 

And this it is which forms one of the great perplexities 
of life ; for as there is enough of what is right in men's 
judgments and conduct to forbid us from saying, that we 
must take the very rule of contraries, and think and do 
just the opposite to the opinions and practice of men in 
general ; so, on the other hand, there is always so much 
wrong in them, that we may never dare to follow them as 
a standard, but shall find, that if trusted to as such, they 
will inevitably betray us. So that in points of greater 
moment than mere manners and fashion, it will ever be 
true, that if we would be prepared for Christ's coming, 
we must rise to a far higher standard than that of society 
in general ; that in the greatest concerns of human life, 
the practice of the majority, though always containing 
something of good, is yet in its prevailing character, as 
regards God, so evil, that they who are content to follow 
it cannot be saved. 

This is the explanation of the apparent difficulty in 
the general, and thus, while acknowledging that there 
are points in which men, by common consent, make out 
what is best ; and others in which, although they do not 
make it out, nor at first appreciate it, yet they are very 
willing to adopt it upon trust, and so come by experience 
to value it ; while, therefore, there are a great many 
things in which singularity is either a disease or a foolish- 
ness ; so again there are other points in which men in 
general have not the power to make out what is good, 
nor yet the docility to adopt it ; and, therefore, in these 
points, which relate to the great matters of life, singu- 



184 A SERIOUS DEFECT. 

larity is Tvisdom and salvation, and he Trho does as others 
do, perishes. That is what is called the corruption of 
human nature. I shall attempt, on another occasion, 
to go into some further details, and show, by common 
examples, how strangely our judgment and practice con- 
tain, with much that is right, just that one taint or defect 
which, as a whole, spoils them. And this one defect will 
be found to be, as the Scripture declares, a defect in our 
sense of our relation towards God. 



LECTURE XVII. 



1 Corinthians ii. 12. 

We have received not iJie spirit of the tcorld, but the Spirit which is of 

God. 

And, therefore, lie goes on to say, our language is 
different from that of others, and not always understood 
by them ; the natural man receiveth not the things of 
God, for they are foolishness unto him ; neither can he 
know them, because they are spiritually discerned. That 
is, they are discerned only by a faculty which he has not, 
namely, by the Spirit ; and, therefore, as beings devoid 
of reason cannot understand the truths of science, or of 
man's wisdom, for they are without the faculty which can 
discern them ; so beings devoid of God's Spirit cannot 
understand the truths of God. 

Now, in order to turn this passage to our profit, we 
need not consider those who are wholly without God's 
Spirit, or inquire whether, indeed, there be any such ; it 
is not that there are two broadly marked divisions of all 
men, those who have not the Spirit of God at all, and 
those who have it abundantly : if it were so, the separation 
of the great day of judgment would be begun already, 
nor would it require, in order to effect it rightly, the 
wisdom of Him who trieth the very hearts and reins. 
No doubt there will be at last but tivo divisions of us all, 
the saved and the lost ; but now the divisions are infinite ; 
so much so that the great body of us offer much matter 
16* ' (185) 



186 THE COMMON SE^-TIMENT PAHTIALLY RIGHT. 

for hope as well as for fear. We cannot say, that they 
are without the Spirit of God ; yet neither can we say 
that they are led by the Spirit, so as to be God's 
true servants. We cannot say, that the things of God's 
are absolutely to them as foolishness; yet certainly, we 
cannot say either, that they are to them as the divinest 
wisdom. 

And here we return to the subject on which I was 
speaking last Sunday. It is because we are not led by the 
Spirit of God, but have within us much of the spirit of the 
world, that our judgments of right and wrong are so faulty ; 
and that this faultiness is particularly seen in our faint 
sense of our relations to God. These relations seem 
continually foolishness to us, because they are spiritually 
discerned, and we have so little of God's Spirit to enable 
us to discern them. And our blindness here affects our 
whole souls ; we have, in consequence of it, a much fainter 
perception even of those truths which reason can discern 
by herself; or, at any rate, if we do not doubt them, they 
have over us much less influence. 

Now we will first see how much of natural reason, and 
even of the Spirit of God, does exist in our common 
judgments ; for it is fair to see and to allow what there is 
of right in our language and sentiments, as well as to note 
what is wrong. Reason influences thus much, that we not 
only commend good generally, and blame evil; but even, 
in particular cases, we commend, I think, each separate 
virtue, and we blame each separate vice. I never heard 
of justice, truth, kindness, self-denial, (fee, being other 
than approved of in themselves; or injustice, falsehood, 
malice, and selfishness being other than condemned. And 
the Spirit of God influences at least thus much, that we 
shrink from direct blasphemy and profaneness; we can- 
not but respect those whom we believe to be living sin- 



OUR WANT OF EARNESTNESS. 187 

cerely In the fear of God ; and further, if we thought our 
death near, we should desire to hear of God, and to 
depart from this life under his favour. No doubt, all 
such feelings, so far as they go, are the work of God's 
Spirit : whatever is good and right in our minds towards 
God, that proceeds not from the spirit of the world, but 
from the Spirit of God. 

Where, then, is the great defect which yet continually 
makes our practical judgments quite wrong ; which makes 
us, in fact, so often countenance and support evil, and 
discountenance and discourage good ? First, it is owing 
to the spirit of carelessness. One of the most emphatic 
terms by which a good man is expressed in the language 
of the Greek philosophers, is that of cf'xSouTaos, " one who 
is in earnest." To be in earnest is, indeed, with most of 
us, the same as to be good ; it is not that we love evil, but 
that we are indifferent both to it and to good. Now, 
many of us are very seldom in earnest. By this I mean, 
that the highest part of our minds, and that which judges 
of the highest things, is generally slumbering or but half 
awake. "We may go through a very busy day, and yet 
not be, in this true sense, in earnest at all ; our best 
faculties may, as it were, be all the while sleeping or 
playing. It is notorious how much this is so in the 
common imtercourse of society in the world. Light 
anecdotes ; playful remarks ; discussions, it may be, about 
the affairs of the neighbourhood, or, in some com- 
panies, on questions of science or party politics ; all 
these may be often heard ; but we may talk on all these 
brilliantly and well, and yet our best nature may not once 
be called to exert itself. So again, in mere routine 
business, it is the same : the body may toil ; the pen 
move swiftly ; the thoughts act in the particular matter 
before them vigorously ; and yet we our proper selves, 



188 THUS CONSCIENCE SLUMBERS, 

beings understanding and choosing between good and evil, 
have never bestirred ourselves at all. It has been but a 
skirmishing at the outposts ; not a sword had been drawn 
in the main battle. Take younger persons, and the 
same thing is the case even' more palpably. Here there 
is less of business in the common sense of the term ; the 
mind is almost always unbraced and resting. We pass 
through the good and evil of our daily life, and our proper 
self scarcely ever is aroused to notice either the one or' 
the other. 

But the worst of it is, that this carelessness is not alto- 
gether accidental : it is a carelessness which we do not 
wish to break. So long as it lasts, we manage to get the 
activity and interest of life, without a sense of its respon- 
sibility. We like exceedingly to lay the reins, as it were, 
upon the neck of our inclinations, to go where they take 
us, and to ask no questions whether we are in the right 
road or no. Inclination is never slumbering : this gives 
us excitement enough to save us from weariness, without 
the effort of awakening our conscience too. Therefore 
society, expressing in its rules the feelings of its indivi- 
dual members, prescribes exactly such a style of conversa- 
tion as may keep in exercise all other parts of our nature 
except that one which should be sovereign of all, and 
whose exercise is employed on things eternal. 

Not being, then, properly in earnest, — that is, our 
conscience and our choice of moral good and evil being in 
a state of repose, — our language is happily contrived so 
as that it shall contain nothing to startle our sleeping con- 
science, if her ears catch any of its sounds. We still 
commend good and dispraise evil, both in the general and 
in the particular. But as good and evil are mixed in 
every man, and in various proportions, he who commends, 
the little good of a bad man, saying nothing of his evil, — 



AND EVIL GIVES US NO PAIN. 189 

or he who condemns the little evil of a good man, saying 
nothing of his good, — leads us evidently to a false practi- 
cal conclusion ; he leads us to like the bad man and to dis- 
like the good. Again, the lesser good becomes an evil if 
it keeps out a greater good; and, in the same way, the 
lesser evil becomes a good. If we have no thought of 
comparing good things together, if our sovereign nature 
be asleep, then we shall most estimate the good to which 
we are most inclined ; and where we find this we shall 
praise it, not observing that it is taking up the place of a 
greater good which the case requires, and, therefore, that 
it is in fact an evil. So that our moral judgments may 
lead practically to great evil: we may join with bad men 
and despise good ; we may approve of qualities which are, 
in fact, ruining a man ; and despise others which, in the 
particular case, are virtues ; without ever in plain words 
condemning virtue or approving vice. 

But, farther, this habit of never being in earnest 
greatly lowers the strength of our feelings even towards 
the good which we praise and towards the evil which we 
condemn. It was an admirable definition of that which 
excites laughter, that it was that which is out of rule, that 
which is amiss, that which is unsightly, (these three ideas, 
and other similar ones, are alike contained in the single 
Greek word akxp'j^,) provided that it was unaccompanied 
by pain. This definition accounts for the otherwise extra- 
ordinary fact, that there is something in moral evil which, 
in some instances, afiects the mind ludicrously. That is 
to say, if moral evil aifects us with no pain ; if we see in 
it nothing, so to speak, but its irregularity, its strange 
contrast with what is beautiful, its jarring with the har- 
motiy of the system around us ; then it does acquire that 
character which is well defined as being ridiculous. Thus 
it is notorious that trifling follies, and even gross vices, 



190 HENCE INDIFFERENCE TO GOOD. 

are often so represented in works of fiction as to be ex- 
ceedingly ludicrous. It is enough, as an instance of what 
I mean, to name the vice of drunkenness. Get rid for 
the moment of the notions of vice or sin which accompany 
it, and which give moral pain ; get rid also of those points 
in it which awaken physical disgust ; retain merely the 
notion of the incoherent language, and the strange capri- 
cious gait of intoxication ; and we have then an image 
merely ridiculous, as much so as the ramhling talk and 
absurd gestures of the old buffoons. 

Here, then, we have the secret of vice becoming laugh- 
able ; and of things which are really wicked, disgusting, 
hateful, being expressed by names purely ludicrous. 
Where no great physical pain or distress is occasioned by 
what is evil, our sense of its ludicrousness will be exactly 
in proportion to the faintness of our sense of moral evil; 
or, in other words, to our want of being in earnest. The 
evil that does not seriously pain or inconvenience man, is 
very apt to be regarded with feelings approaching to 
laughter, if we have no sense of pain at the notion of its 
being an offence against God. 

Thus, then, we have seen how, from the want of being 
in earnest, from the habitual slumber of conscience, or 
that sovereign part of us which looks upon our whole state 
with reference to its highest interests, and passes judg- 
ment upon all our actions, — how, from the practical 
absence of these, we may get to follow evil persons, and 
be indifferent to the good ; to admire qualities which, from 
usurping the place of better ones, are actually ruinous ; 
and, finally, to regard all common evil not so much with 
deep abhorrence, as with a disposition to laugh at it. And 
thus the practical judgment and influence of the society 
around us may be fatally evil ; while the society all the 



THE PRACTICAL APPLICATION. 191 

time shall contain, even in its very perversion, various 
elements of truth and of good. 

I have kept to general language, to general views, per- 
haps too much ; hut all the time my mind has been fixed 
on the particular application of this, which lies scarcely 
beneath the surface, but which I cannot well bear more 
fully to unveil. But whoever has attended to what I have 
been saying, will be able, I should trust, to make the ap- 
plication, for himself, to those points in our society which 
most need correction. He will be able to understand how 
it is that the influence of the place is not better, while it 
undoubtedly contains so much of good; how the public 
opinion of a Christian school may yet be, in many re- 
spects, very unchristian. If he has attended at all to what 
I have said about our so rarely being in earnest, he will 
see something of the mischief of some of those publica- 
tions, of those books, of that tone of conversation, which, 
I suppose, are here, as elsewhere, in fashion. Utterly im- 
possible is it to lay down a rule for others in such matters : 
to say this book is too light, or this is an excess of light 
reading, or this laugh was too unrestrained, or that tone 
of trifling too perpetual. But, in these things, we should 
all judge ourselves ; and remember that you are so little 
under outward restraint, your choice of reading is so free, 
your intercourse with one another so wholly uncontrolled, 
that, enjoying thus the full liberty of more advanced 
years, you incur also their responsibility. There is, 
doubtless, an excess of light reading, both in kind and in 
quantity ; there is such a thing as a tone of conversation 
and manner too entirely, and too frequently, trifling. And 
you must be quite aware that we are placed here for some- 
thing else than to indulge such a temper as this. Cheer- 
fulness and thoughtlessness have no necessary connexion ; 
the lightest spirits, which are indeed one of the greatest 



192 THE RIGHTFUL REMEDY. 

of earthly blessings, often play around the most earnest 
thought and the tenderest affection, and with far more 
grace than when they are united with the shallowness and 
hardness of him who is, in the sight of God, a fool. It 
were a strange notion, that we could never be merry with- 
out intoxication, yet not stranger than to think that mirth 
is the companion only of folly or of sin. But, setting 
God in Christ before us, then the conscience is awake ; 
then we are in earnest ; then we measure things rightly ; 
then we feel them strongly ; then we love those that are 
good, and shun those that are evil ; then we learn that sin 
is no matter of laughter, that it ill deserves to be clothed 
under a ludicrous name ; for that thing which we laugh 
at, that which we so miscall, is indeed the cause of infinite 
evil ; for that Christ died ; for that there are some who 
die that death which lasts for ever. 



LECTURE XYTII. 



Genesis xxvii. 38. 

And Esau said unto hi s father, Hast thou hut one blessing, my father f 
Bless me, even me also, O my father. 

Matthew xv. 27. 

And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall 
from their master^ s table. 

Of these two passages, the first, as we must all remem- 
ber, is taken from the first lesson of this morning's ser- 
vice ; the second is from the morning's gospel. Both 
ppeak the same language, and point out, I think, that par- 
ticular view of the story of Jacob obtaining the blessing 
which is most capable of being turned to account ; for, as 
to the conduct of Jacob and his mother, it is manifestly 
no more capable of afi'ording us benefit, as a matter of 
example, than the conduct, in some respects similar, of 
the unjust steward in our Lord's parable. The example, 
indeed, is of the same kind as that. If the steward was 
so anxious about his future worldly welfare, and Jacob 
about the worldly welfare of his descendants, that they 
did not scruple to obtain their ends, the one by dishonesty, 
the other by falsehood, much more should we be anxious 
about the true welfare of ourselves and those belonging to 
us, which no such unworthy means can be required to 
gain. But the point of the story to which the text refers, 
17 (193) 



194 now TO REGARD OTHERS' ADVANTAGES, 

and which is illustrated also by the words of the Syrophoe- 
nician woman, is one which very directly concerns us all, 
being no other than this, — what should be the eifcct upon 
our own minds of witnessing oiaers possessed of greater 
advantages than ourselves, whether obtained by the im- 
mediate gift of God, through the course of his ordinary 
providence, or acquired directly by some unjust or unlaw- 
ful act of those who are in possession of them ? 

Now, it is evident that, as equality is not the rule 
either of nature or of human society, there must be many 
in every congregation who are so far in the condition of 
Esau and of the Syrophoenician woman, as to be inferior 
to others around them in some one or more advantages. 
The inferiority may consist in what are called worldly ad- 
vantages, or in natural advantages, or in spiritual advan- 
tages, or in some or all of these united. And it is not to 
be doubted that the sense of this inferiority is a hard 
trial, both as respects our feelings towards God and 
towards men. It is a hard trial ; but yet, no trial over- 
takes us but such as is common to man : and here, as in 
all other cases, God will, with the trial, also make a way 
for us to escape, that we may be able to bear it. 

Let us consider, then, some of the most common cases 
in which this inferiority exists amongst us. With regard 
to worldly advantages, the peculiar nature of this congre- 
gation makes it less necessary than it generally would be, 
to dwell upon inequality in these : in fact, speaking gene- 
rally, we are a very unusual example of equality in these 
respects ; the advantages of station and fortune are en- 
joyed not, literally, in an equal degree by all of us, but 
equally as compared with the lot of the great mass of 
society ; we all enjoy the necessaries, and most of the 
comforts of life. What differences there are would, pro- 
bably, appear in instances seemingly trifling, if, indeed, 



WHETHER OF FORTUNE, l^-^O 

any thing were really trifling by wliicli tlio temper and 
feelings, and through them the principles, of any amongst 
us may be affected for good or for evil. It may possibly 
happen that, in the indulgences, or means of indulgence, 
given to you by your friends at home, there may be, some- 
times, such a difference as to excite discontent or jealousy. 
It may be, that some are apt to exult over others, by talk- 
ing of the pleasures, or the liberty, which they enjoy ; and 
which the friends of others, either from necessity or from 
a sense of duty, are obliged to withhold. If this be ever 
felt by any of you as a trial ; if it gall your pride, as well 
as restrict your enjoyments ; then remember, that here, 
even in this seemingly little thing, the inferiority of which 
you complain may be either increased ten-fold, or changed 
into a blessed superiority. Increased ten-fold, even as 
from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that 
which he hath, if by discontent, and evil passions towards 
God and man, you make yourselves a hundred times more 
inferior spiritually than you were in outward circum- 
stances ; but changed into a blessed superiority, if it be 
borne with meekness, and patience, and thankfulness, even 
as it was said of the Gentile centurion, that there had not 
been found faith equal to his, no, not in Israel. 

But turning from worldly advantages to those which are 
called natural, a id the inequality here is at once as great 
as elsewhere. In all faculties of body and mind ; in the 
vigour of the senses, of the limbs, of the general constitu- 
tion ; in the greater or less liability to disease generally, 
or to any particular form of it ; or, again, in powers of 
mind, in quickness, in memory, in imagination, in judg- 
ment; the differences between different persons in this 
congregation must be exceedingly wide. But, with regard 
to bodily powers, the trial is little felt, till the inferiority 
is shown in actual suffering from pain or from disease. So 



196 EITHER OF BODY OR MIND. 

long as "we are in health, our enjoyments are so many, 
and "vre so easily accommodate our habits to our powers, 
that a mere inferiority of strength, whether it be of limb 
or of constitution, is not apt to make us dissatisfied. But 
if it comes to actual illness or to pain, if we are deprived 
of the common enjoyments and occupations of our age, 
then perhaps the trial begins to be severe ; and when we 
look at others who have taken the same liberties with their 
health as we have done, and see them notwithstanding 
perfectly well and strong, while we are disabled or suffer- 
ing, we may think that God has dealt hardly with us, and 
may be inclined to ask with Esau, '' Hast thou but one 
blessing, my Father ? bless me, even me also, my 
Father I" Now this language, according to the sense in 
which we use it, is either blameable or innocent. If we 
mean to say, " Hast thou health to give to others only and 
not to me ? give me this blessing also, as thou hast given 
it to my brethren :" then it has in it somewhat of discontent 
and murmuring ; it implies a claim to which God never 
listens. But if we mean, " Hast thou only one kind of 
blessing, my father ? If thou hast blest others in one way, 
I murmur not nor complain : but out of thine infinite 
store, give me also such a blessing as may be convenient 
forme;" then God hears the prayer, then he gives the 
blessing, and gives it so richly, and makes it bear so 
evidently the mark of his love, that they who were last are 
become first ; if others have health, and we have sickness, 
yet the spirit of patience and cheerful submission which 
God gives with it is so great a blessing, and makes us so 
certainly happy, that the strongest and healthiest of our 
friends have often far more reason to wish to change 
places with us, than we with them. 

Let us now take inequality in powers of mind. And 
here, undoubtedly, the difference is apt to be a trial. 



advaxtaCtES of others in mixd. 197 

Not that, probably, it excites discontent or murmuring 
af^ainst God ; nor jealousy against those whose faculties 
are better than our own : the trial is of another kind ; we 
are tempted to make our inferiority an excuse for neglect ; 
because we cannot do so much nor so easily as others, we 
do far less than we might do. But the parable shows 
us plainly, that if one talent only has been given us, while 
others have ten, yet that the one, no less than the ten, 
must bo made to yield its increase. Here is the feeling 
expressed so earnestly by the woman entreating Christ to 
heal her daughter. '' The dogs eat of the crumbs which 
fall from their master's table." Small as may be the 
portion of power given us, when compared with the plenty 
vouchsafed to others, still it is capable of nourishing us if 
we make use of it ; still it shows that we too have our 
blessing. And if using it with thankfulness, if doing our 
very best with it, knowing that " a man is accepted accord- 
ins: to what he hath, and not accordinsj to what he hath 
not," we labour humbly and diligently; then, not only 
does the talent itself become increased, so that our Lord, 
when he comes to reckon with us, may receive his own 
with usury : but a blessing of another kind is added to our 
labours, again, as in the former case, making those who 
were last to become first. For if there be one thing on 
earth which is truly admirable, it is to see God's wisdom 
blessing an inferiority of natural powers, when they have 
been honestly, humbly, and zealously cultivated. From 
how many pains are they delivered, to which great natural 
talents are continually exposed ; irritation, jealousy, a 
morbid and nervous activity, bearing. fruits not of peace, 
but of gall ! With what blessings are they crowned, to 
which the most powerful natural understanding is a 
stranger I the love of truth gratified, without the fear that 
truth will demand the sacrifice of personal vanity ; the 
17=^ 



198 HOW WE MAY GAIX OUR BLESSING, 

line of duty clearly discerned, because those mists of 
passion and selfishness which obscure it so often from the 
view of the keenest natural perception, have been dispersed 
by the spirit of humility and love ; imperfect knowledge 
patiently endured, because whatever knowledge is enjoyed 
is known to be God's gift, and what he gives, or what he 
withholds, is aHke welcome. This is the blessing of those 
who having had inferior natural powers, have so laboured 
to improve them according to God's will, that on all there 
has been grafted, as it were, some better pow^r of grace, 
to yield a fruit most precious both for earth and heaven. 

But I spoke of an equality of spiritual advantages also, 
and this is perhaps the hardest trial of all. Oh, how great 
is this inequality in truth, when it seems to be so little ! 
All of you, the children of Christian parents ; all members 
of the Christian Church ; all partaking here of the same 
worship, the same prayers, the same word of God, the same 
sacrament ; are you not all the Israel of God, and not, 
like Esau, or the Syrophoenician woman, strangers to the 
covenant of blessing ? Yet your real condition is, not- 
withstanding, very unequal. How unlike are your friends 
at home ; how", unlike, also, are your friends here ! Are 
there not some to whom their homes, both by direct pre- 
cept and by example, are a far greater help than to others ? 
Are there not some, whose immediate companions here 
may encourage them in all good far more than may be the 
case with others ? So, then, there may be some to whom 
this great blessing has been denied, whilst others enjoy it. 
What then ? Shall we say, that, because we have it not, 
we will refuse to go in to our Father's house ; that we will 
not walk as our brother walks, unless we have his advan- 
tages ? Then must we remain cast out ; vessels fashioned 
to dishonour ; rejected of God, and cursed. Nay rather 
let us put a Christian sense on Esau's prayer, and cry, 
'"Hast thou but one blessing, my Father ? bless me, even 



so THAT THE LAST MAY BE FIRST. 199 

me also, my Fatlier.' If thou hast given to others 
earthly helps, which thou hast denied to me, give me thy- 
self and thy own Spirit the more ! If father and mother 
forsake my most precious interest, do thou take me up. 
If my nearest friends will not walk with me in the house 
of God, be thou my friend, and abide with me always, 
making my house as thine. Outward and earthly means 
thou givest or takest away at thy pleasure ; but give me 
help according to my need, that I yet may not lose thee." 
How naturally are we interested at the thought of any 
one so circumstanced, and uttering such a prayer ! How 
earnestly do we wish to help him, to show our respect and 
true love for a faith so tried and so enduring ! And think 
we that God cares for it less than we do ? or have we not 
already the record of his love towards it, when Christ 
answered the Syrophoenician woman, '^ woman, great is 
thy faith : be it unto thee even as thou wilt ?" He may 
not, indeed, see fit to give the very same blessing which 
was in the first instance denied : we may still have fewer 
spiritual advantages than others, as far as human helps are 
concerned ; fewer good and earnest friends ; fewer examples 
of holiness around us ; fewer to join with us in our prayers 
and in our struggles against evil. But though this par- 
ticular blessing may be denied, — as Esau could not gain 
that blessing which had been given to Jacob, — yet there is 
a blessing for us also, which may prove, in the end, even 
better than our brother's. He who serves God steadily, 
amidst many disadvantages, enjoys the blessing of a more 
confirmed and hardier faith ; he has gone through trials, 
and been found conqueror ; and for him that overcometh 
is reserved a more abundant measure of glory, 
r But on the other side, we who, like Jacob, or Jacob's 
posterity, have the blessing, — whether it be natural, 
worldly, or spiritual, — let us consider what became of it 



200 THE riRST MAY BE LAST. 

wiien it was not improved. What was the sin of Esau, — 
speaking not of the individual, but of the less favoured 
people of Edom, — compared with the sin of Jacob ? Nay, 
not of Edom only ; but it shall be more tolerable for 
Sodom, in the day of judgment, than for the unbelieving 
cities of Israel. So it is, not only with the literal, but 
with the Christian Israel ; so it is, not only with the 
Church as a whole compared with heathens, but with all 
those individuals amongst us, who enjoy in any larger 
measure than others any of God's blessings. They are 
blessings ; but they may be made fatal curses. This holds 
true with blessings of every kind : with station and wealth, 
with bodily health and vigour, with great powers of mind, 
with large means of spiritual improvement. To whom 
much is given, of him shall be much required. It is re- 
quired of us to enjoy our blessings by using them : so will 
they be be blessings indeed. So it is with money and 
influence, with health, with talents, with spiritual know- 
ledge, and good friends and parents. There are first who 
shall be last ; that is, those who began their course with 
advantages which set them before their brethren, if they 
do not exert themselves, will fall grievously behind them : 
for the blessing denied may be, in effect, a blessing given ; 
and the blessing given, in like manner, becomes too often 
a blessing taken away. 



LECTUKE XIX 



Matthew xsii. 32. 
God is not ilie God of the dead, hut of the living, 

"VYe hear these words as a part of our Lord's answer to 
the Sadducees ; and, as their question was put in evident 
profaneness, and the answer to it is one which to our minds 
is quite obvious and natural, so we are apt to think that in 
this particular story there is less than usual that particu- 
larly concerns us. But it so happens, that our Lord, in 
answering the Sadducees, has brought in one of the most 
universal and most solemn of all truths, — which is indeed 
implied in many parts of the Old Testament, but which 
the Gospel has revealed to us in all its fulness, — the truth 
contained in the words of the text, that " God is not the 
God of the dead, but of the living." 

I would wish to unfold a little what is contained in these 
words, which we often hear even, perhaps, without quite 
understanding them ; and many times oftener without fully 
entering into them. And we may take them, first, in their 
first part, where they say that " God is not the God of the 
dead." 

The word ^'dead," we know, is constantly used in 
Scripture in a double sense, as meaning those who are 
dead spiritually, as well as those who are dead naturally. 
And, in either sense, the words are alike applicable : 
" God is not the God of the dead." 

(201) 



202 TO BE WITHOUT GOD IS DEATH. 

God's not being the God of tlie dead signifies two things : 
that they who are without him are dead, as well as that 
they who are dead are also without him. So far as our 
knowledge goes respecting inferior animals, they appear 
to be examples of this truth. They appear to us to have 
no knowledge of God ; and we are not told that they have 
any other life than the short one of which our senses in- 
form us. I am well aware that our ignorance of their 
condition is so great that we may not dare to say anything 
of them positively ; there may be a hundred things true 
respecting them which we neither know nor imagine. I 
would only say that, according to that most imperfect light t 
in which we see them, the two points of which I have been 
speaking appear to meet in them : we believe that they 
have no consciousness of God, and we believe that they 
will die. And so far, therefore, they afi"ord an example 
of the agreement, if I may so speak, between these two 
points ; and were intended, perhaps, to be to our view a 
continual image of it. But we had far better speak of 
ourselves. And here, too, it is the case that " God is not 
the God of the dead." If we are without him we are 
dead ; and if we are dead we are without him : in other 
words, the two ideas of death and absence from God are 
in fact synonymous. 

Thus, in the account given of the fall of man, the sen- 
tence of death and of being cast out of Eden go together ; 
and if any one compares the description of the second 
Eden in the Revelation, and recollects how especially it is 
there said, that God dwells in the midst of it, and is its 
light by day and night, he will see that the banishment 
from the first Eden means a banishment from the presence 
of God. And thus, in the day that Adam sinned, he 
died ; for he was cast out of Eden immediately, however 
long he may have moved about afterwards upon the earth 



EXAMPLES FrvOM SCRIPTURE. 203 

■where God was not. And how very strong to the same 
point are the words of Hezekiah's prayer, " The grave 
cannot praise thee, Death cannot celebrate thee ; they 
that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth;" 
words which express completely the feeling that God is 
not the God of the dead. This, too, appears to he the 
sense generally of the expression used in various parts of 
the Old Testament, " Thou shalt surely die." It is, no 
doubt, left purposely obscure ; nor are we ever told, in so 
many words, all that is meant by death; but, surely, it 
always implies a separation from God, and the being — 
whatever the notion may extend to — the being dead to 
him. Thus, when David had committed his great sin, and 
had expressed his repentance for it, Nathan tells him, 
" The Lord also hath put away thy sin ; thou shalt not 
die:" which means, most expressively, thou shalt not die 
to God. In one sense, David died, as all men die ; nor 
was he, by any means, freed from the punishment of his 
sin : he was not, in that sense, forgiven ; but he was 
allowed still to regard God as his God ; and, therefore, 
his punishments were but fatherly chastisements from 
God's hand, designed for his profit, that he might be par- 
taker of God's holiness. And thus although Saul was 
sentenced to lose his kingdom, and although he was killed 
with his sons on Mount Gilboa, yet I do not think that we 
find the sentence passed upon him, " Thou shalt surely 
die ;" and, therefore, we have no right to say that God 
had ceased to be his God, although he visited him with 
severe chastisements, and would not allow him to hand 
down to his sons the crown of Israel. Observe, also, the 
language of the eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel, where the 
expressions occur so often, "He shall surely live," and 
'' He shall surely die." We have no right to refer these 
to a mere extension, on the one hand, or a cutting short, 



204 TO BE OWNED BY GOB IS LIFE. 

on the other, of the term of earthly existence. The pro- 
mise of living long in the land, or, as in Hezeldah's case, 
of adding to his days fifteen years, is very different from 
the full and unreserved blessing, " Thoushalt surely live." 
And we know, undoubtedly, that both the good and the 
bad to whom Ezekiel spoke, died alike the natural death 
of the body. But the peculiar force of the promise, and 
of the threat, was, in the one case. Thou shalt belong to 
God ; in the other, Thou shalt cease to belong to him ; 
although the veil was not yet drawn up which concealed 
the full import of those terms, " belonging to God," and 
" ceasing to belong to him :" nay, can we venture to 
affirm that it is fully drawn aside even now ? 

I have dwelt on this at some length, because it really 
seems to place the common state of the minds of too many 
amongst us in a light which is exceedingly awful ; for if it 
be true, as I think the Scripture implies, that to be dead, 
and to be without God, are precisely the same thing, then 
can it be denied, that the symptoms of death are strongly 
marked upon many of us ? Are there not many who never 
think of God, or care about his service ? Are there not 
many who live, to all appearance, as unconscious of his exist- 
ence as we fancy the inferior animals to be ? And is it not 
quite clear, that to such persons, God cannot be said to be 
their God ? He may be the God of heaven and earth, the 
God of the universe, the God of Christ's church ; but he 
is not their God, for they feel to have nothing at all to do 
with him ; and, therefore, as he is not their God, they are, 
and must be, according to the Scripture, reckoned among 
the dead. 

But God is the God " of the living." That is, as before, 
all who are alive, live unto him ; all who live"unto him, are 
alive. ^' God said, I am the God of Abraham, and the 
God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob ;" and, therefore, says 



LIFE AND DEATH. 205 

our Lord, '' xVbraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, are not and 
cannot be dead." They cannot be dead, because God owns 
them : he is not ashamed to be called their God ; therefore, 
they are not cast out from him ; therefore, by necessity, 
they live. Wonderful, indeed, is the truth bere implied, 
in exact agreement, as we have seen, with the general 
language of Scripture ; that, as she who but touched the 
hem of Christ's garment was, in a moment, relieved from 
ber infirmity, so great was the virtue which went out from 
bim ; so they who are not cast out from God, but have any 
thing whatever to do with him, feel the virtue of bis gra- 
cious presence penetrating their whole nature ; because he 
lives, they must live also. 

Behold, then, life and death set before us ; not remote, 
(if a few years be, indeed, to be called remote,) but even 
now present before us ; even now suffered or enjoyed. 
Even now, we are alive unto God, or dead unto God ; and, 
as we are either the one or the other, so we are, in the 
highest possible sense of the terms, alive or dead. In the 
highest possible sense of the terms ; but who can tell what 
that highest possible sense of the terms is ? So much has, 
indeed, been revealed to us, that we know now that death 
means a conscious and perpetual death, as life means a 
conscious and perpetual life. But greatly, indeed, do we 
deceive ourselves, if we fancy that, by having thus much 
told us, we have also risen to the infinite heights, or 
descended to the infinite depths, contained in those little 
words, life and death. They are far higher, and far deeper, 
than ever thought or fancy of man has reached to. But, 
even on the first edge of either, at the visible beginnings 
of that infinite ascent or descent, there is surely something 
which may give us a foretaste of what is beyond. Even 
to us in this moral state, even to you advanced but so short 
a way on your very earthly journey, life and death have a 
18 



206 WITHOUT GOD, WE ARE DEAD 



meaning : to be dead unto God, or to be alive to liim, are 
tilings perceptibly different. 

For, let me ask of those who think least of God, who 
are most separate from him, and most without him, whether 
there is not now actually, perceptibly, in their state, some- 
thing of the coldness, the loneliness, the fearfulness of 
death ? I do not ask them whether they are made unhappy 
by the fear of God's anger ; of course they are not : for 
they who fear God are not dead to him, nor he to them. 
The thought of him gives them no disquiet at all ; this is 
the very point we start from. But I would ask them 
whether they know what it is to feel God's blessing. For 
instance : we all of us have our troubles of some sort or 
other, our disappointments, if not our sorrows. In these 
troubles, in these disappointments, — I care not how small 
they may be, — have they known what it is to feel that 
God's hand is over them ; that these little annoyances are 
but his fatherly correction ; that he is all the time loving 
us, and supporting us ? In seasons of joy, such as they 
taste very often, have they known what it is to feel that 
they are tasting the kindness of their heavenly Father, 
that their good things come from his hand, and are but an 
infinitely slight foretaste of his love ? Sickness, danger, 

I know that they come to many of us but rarely ; but 

if we have known them, or at least sickness, even in its 
lio-hter form, if not in its graver, — have we felt what it is 
to know that we are in our Father's hands, that he is with 
us, and will be with us to the end ; that nothing can hurt 
those whom he loves? Surely, then, if we have never 
tasted anything of this : if in trouble, or in joy, or in sick- 
ness, we are left wholly to ourselves, to bear as we can, 
and enjoy as we can ; if there is no voice that ever speaks 
out of the heights and the depths around us, to give any 
answer to our own ; if we are thus left to ourselves in this 



WITH HIM, WE APtE ALIVE. 207 

vast world, — there is in this a coldness and a loneliness ; 
and whenever we come to be, of necessity, driven to be with 
our own hearts alone, the coldness and the loneliness must 
be felt. But consider that the things which we see around 
us cannot remain with us, nor we with them. The coldness 
and loneliness of the world, without God, must be felt more 
and more as life wears on : in every change of our own 
state, in every separation from or loss of a friend, in every 
more sensible weakness of our own bodies, in every ad- 
ditional experience of the uncertainty of our own counsels, 
— the deathlike feeling will come upon us more and more 
strongly : we shall gain more of that fearful knowledge 
which tells us that " God is not the God of the dead." 

And so, also, the blessed knowledge that he is the God 
*'of the living" grows upon those who are truly alive. 
Surely he "is not far from every one of us." No occa- 
sion of life fails to remind those who live unto him, that 
he is their God, and that they are his children. On light 
occasions or on grave ones, in sorrow and in joy, still the 
warmth of his love is spread, as it were, all through the 
atmosphere of their lives : they for ever feel his blessing. 
And if it fills them with joy unspeakable even now, when 
they so often feel how little they deserve it ; if they de- 
light still in being with God, and in living to him, let them 
be sure that they have in themselves the unerring witness 
of life eternal : God is the God of the living, and all who 
are with him must live. 

Hard it is, I well know, to bring this home, in any 
degree, to the minds of those who are dead : for it is of 
the very nature of the dead that they can hear no words 
of life. But it has happened that, even whilst writing 
what I have just been uttering to you, the news reached 
me that one, who tv/o months ago was one of your number, 
who this very half-year has shared in all the business and 



208 DAXGEH OF DEATH. 

amusements of this place, is passed already into that state 
where the meanings of the terms life and death are be- 
come fully revealed. He knows what it is to live unto 
God, and what it is to die to him. Those things which are 
to us unfathomable mysteries, are to him all plain : and 
yet but two months ago he might have thought himself as 
far from attaining this knowledge as any of us can do. 
Wherefore it is clear, that these things, life and death, 
may hurry their lesson upon us sooner than we deem of, 
sooner than we are prepared to receive it. And that were 
indeed awful, if, being dead to God, and yet little feeling 
it, because of the enjoyments of our worldly life, those 
enjoyments were on a sudden to be struck away from us, 
and we should find then that to be dead to God was death 
indeed, a death from which there is no waking, and in 
which there is no sleeping for ever. 



LECTURE XX 



EzEKiEL xiii. 22. 

With lies ye liave made the lieart of the righteous sad, ichom I have not 
made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should 
not return from his icickcd icay, hy promising him life. 

The verses which immediatelv precede this, require ex- 
planation, but perhaps our knowledge is hardly sufficient 
to enable us to give it fullv. There are allusions to 
customs, — to fashions rather, — common amongst the Israel- 
ites at the time, which we can now scarcely do more than 
guess at ; but we may observe, that there was a general 
practice, which even God's own prophets were directed often 
to comply with, of enforcing what was said in word by some 
corresponding outward action, in which the speaker made 
himself, as it were, a living image of the idea which he 
meant to convey. Thus, when Zedekiah, the son of Che- 
naanah, was assuring Ahab, that he should drive the 
Syrians before him, he made himself horns of iron, and 
said, " AYith these shalt thou push the Syrians, until thou 
have consumed them." In the same way, it is imagined 
that the false prophetesses spoken of in the text were in 
the habit of wearing pillows, or cushions, fastened to their 
arms, and directed those who came to consult them to do 
the same, as a sign of rest and peace ; that they who 
trusted to them had nothing to fear, but might lie down 
and enjoy themselves at their feasts, or in sleep, with 
entire security. Or, again, if we connect what is said of 
18 * (209) 



210 OBSCURITIES IN POINTS OF DETAIL 

the pillows with what immediatelj follows about the ker- 
chiefs put upon the head, we may suppose that both are 
but parts of a fantastic dress, such as was often worn by 
pretended prophets and fortune-tellers, and which they 
may have made those wear, also, who came before them. 
"We know that the covering on the head was, for instance, 
a part of the ceremonial law of the Roman augurs, when 
they began their divinations. But, however this be, the 
exact understanding of these particular points is not ne- 
cessary to our deriving the lesson of the passage in 
general. I know that there is something naturally pain- 
ful to an active mind in being obliged to content itself with 
an indistinct notion, or still more, with no notion at all, 
of the meaning of any words presented to it. But, whilst 
we should highly value this sensitiveness, as, indeed, few 
qualities are more essential in the pursuit of truth, yet we 
must be careful not to let our disappointment carry us too 
far, so as to pass over a whole passage, or portion, of 
Scripture, as if in despair, because we cannot understand 
every part of it. Much of the supposed obscurity of the 
prophets arises from this cause — that we find in them par- 
ticular expressions and allusions, which, whether from a 
fault in the translation, or from our imperfect knowledge 
of the times of which the prophets speak, and of the 
language in which they wrote, are certainly quite unintel- 
ligible. But these are only a few expressions, occurring 
here and there ; and it is a great evil to fancy that their 
writings, in general, are not to be understood, because of 
the difficulty of particular passages in them. Thus, with 
the very chapter of which we are now speaking, the ex- 
pression to which I have alluded can only be uncertainly 
interpreted, yet the lesson of the chapter, as a whole, is 
perfectly clear, notwithstanding. The dress, or fashions, 
or particular rites, of the false prophets of Jerusalem and 



DO NOT EXTEND TO THE GENERAL MEANING. 211 

their votaries, may offer no distinct image to our minds ; 
but the evil of their doings, how they deceived others, and 
were themselves deceived ; the points, that is, which alone 
concern us practically, these are set before us plainly. 
" With their lies they made the heart of the righteous sad, 
whom God had not made sad ; and they strengthened the 
hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his 
wicked way, by promising him life." Where the way of 
life was broad, they strove to make it narrow ; and where 
it was narrow, they strove to make it broad: by their 
solemn and superstitious lies, they frightened and per- 
plexed the good, while, by their lives of ungodliness, they 
emboldened and encouraged the wicked. 

It may not, at first sight, seem necessary that these two 
things should go together ; there might be, it seems, either 
the fault of making the heart of the righteous sad, without 
that of strengthening the hands of the wicked: or there 
might be the strengthening of the hands of the wicked, 
without making sad the heart of the righteous. And so it 
sometimes has been : there has been a wickedness which 
has not tried to keep up superstition : there has been a 
superstition, the supporters of which have not wilfully 
encouraged wickedness. Yet, although this has been so, 
with respect to the intention of the parties concerned, yet 
in their own nature, the tendency of either evil to produce 
the other is sure and universal. We cannot exist without 
some influences of fear and restraint, on the one hand, and 
without some indulgence of freedom, on the other. God 
has provided for both these wants, so to speak, of our 
nature ; he has told us whom we should fear, and where 
we should be restrained, and where, also, we may be safely 
in freedom : there is the fruit forbidden, and the fruit 
which we may eat freely. But if the restraint and the 
liberty be either of them put in the wrong place, the 



212 AN ENDURING EVIL. 

double evil is sure to follow, llestrained in Lis laAvful 
liberty, debarred from the good and wholesome fruit of 
the garden, man breaks out into a liberty which is unlaw- 
ful ; he eats of the forbidden fruit, whose taste is death ; 
or, surfeited with an unholy freedom, and let to run wild 
in a space far too vast for his strength to compass, he 
turns cravingly for that support to his weariness which a 
narrowed range would afford him ; and he limits himself 
on that very quarter in which alone he might expatiate 
freely. Superstition, in fact, is the rest of wickedness, 
and wickedness is the breaking loose of superstition. 

But, however true this may be, are we concerned in it? 
First of all, when we find an evil dwelt upon often in the 
Prophets, and find it dwelt upon again by our Lord and 
his Apostles with no less earnestness, there is, at least, a 
strong presumption, that an evil of this sort is nothing 
local or passing, but that it is fixed in man's nature, and is apt 
to grow up in all times, and in all countries. Now, the 
double evil spoken of in the text, occurs again in the gos- 
pel ; there w^e find men spoken of, who, in like manner, 
insisted upon what was trifling, and were careless of what 
was important ; and in the epistles, we find, again, the 
same characters holding up as righteous others than 
those who worked righteousness: men, who spoke lies in 
hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron. 
We may presume, therefore, that this evil is of an enduring 
character ; but if we look back to the history of the Chris- 
tian Church, or look around us, the presumption becomes 
the sad conviction of experience. 

Nor is the evil merely one which exists in the country 
at large ; a thing which might be fully dwelt upon any 
where but here. On the contrary, I hardly know of 
an age more exposed to it th^n youth. There exist in 
youth, in a very high degree, those opposite feelings of our 



SUPERSTITION IS IDOLATRY. 213 

nature, which 1 have before spoken of; a tendency to 
respect, to follow, to be led, on the one hand ; and on the 
other, a lively desire for independence and freedom. 
These feelings often exist in the greatest strength in the 
same individual ; and when they are not each turned in 
their proper direction, ruin is the consequence. Nothing 
is more common than to see great narrowness of mind, 
great prejudices, and gre*t disorderliness of conduct, 
united in the same person. Nothing is more common than 
to see the same mind utterly prostrated before some idol 
of its own, and supporting that idol with the most furious 
zeal, and at the same time utterly rebellious to Christ, and 
rejecting with scorn the enlightening, the purifying, and 
the loving influences of Christ's Spirit. 

The idols of various minds are infinitely various, some 
seducing the loftiest natures and some the vilest. But of 
this we may be sure, that every one of us has a tendency 
to some one idol or other, if not to many ; and our business 
is especially each to watch ourselves, lest we be enslaved 
to our peculiar idol. I will now, however, speak of those 
which tempt the highest minds ; which, by their show of 
sacredness and excellence, make us fancy, that while 
following them we are following Christ. And let none be 
surprised, if I rank among idols many things, which, in 
themselves and in their proper use and order, are indeed 
to be loved and reverenced. It was most right to respect 
the Apostle Peter, and listen to his word ; but that great 
Apostle would have been ruin to Cornelius, and not salva- 
tion, if he had suffered him, without reproof, to fall down 
before him, and render to him the service due to Christ 
alone. How many good and pious feelings must have 
been awakened from age to age in many minds, at the 
sight of the brazen serpent on the pole, the memorial of 
their fathers' deliverance in the wilderness ! But when 



214 HOLY THINGS OFTEN MADE IDOLS. 

this awakening, this solemn memorial was corrupted into 
an idol, when men bowed down before it in superstition, it 
was the part of true piety to do as Hezeldah did, to dash 
it, notwithstanding all its solemn associations, into a 
thousand pieces. 

Thus things good, things noble, things sacred, may all 
become idols. To some minds truth is an idol, to others 
justice, to others charity or b^evolence ; and others are 
beguiled by objects of a different sort of sacredness : some 
have made Christ's mother their idol ; some, Christ's 
servants ; some, again, Christ's sacraments, and Christ's 
own body, the Church. If these may all be idols, where 
can we find a name so holy, as that we may surrender up 
our whole souls to it ; before w^hich obedience, reverence, 
without measure, intense humility, most unreserved adora- 
tion, may all be duly rendered. One name there is, and 
one only ; one alone in heaven and in earth ; not truth, 
not justice, not benevolence, not Christ's mother, not his 
holiest servants, not his blessed sacraments, not his very 
mystical body, but Himself only, who died for us and rose 
again, Jesus Christ, both God and Man. 

He is truth, and he is righteousness, and he is love ; he 
gives his grace to his sacraments, and his manifold gifts to 
his Church ; whoever hath him hath all things ; but if we 
do not take heed, whenever we turn our mind to any other 
object, we shall make it an idol and lose him. Take him 
in all his fulness, not as God merely, not as man merely ; 
not in his life on earth only, not in his death only, not in 
his exaltation at God's right hand only ; but in all his ful- 
ness, the Christ of God, God and Man, our Prophet, our 
Priest, our King and Lord, redeeming us by his blood, 
sanctifying us by his Spirit ; and then worship him and 
love him with all the heart, and with all the soul, and with 
all the strength ; and we shall see how all evil will be 



LOVE OF IDOLS IS NOT TRUE REVERENCE, 215 

barred, and all good -^ill abound. No man who worships 
Christ alone, can be a fanatic, nor jet can be a mere 
philosopher ; he cannot be bigoted, nor jet can he be in- 
different ; he cannot be so the slave of what he calls 
amiable feelings as to cast truth and justice behind him ; 
nor jet can he so pursue truth and justice as to lose sight 
of humbler and softer feelings, self-abasement, reverence, 
devotion. There is no evil tendency in the nature of any 
one of us, which has not its cure in the true worship of 
Christ our Saviour. Let us look into our hearts, and con- 
sider their besetting faults. Are we indolent, or are we 
active ; are we enthusiastic, or are we cold ; zealous or in- 
different, devout or reasonable ; whatever the inclination 
or bias of our nature be, if we follow its kindred idol, it 
will be magnified and grow on to our ruin ; if we worship 
Christ, it will be pruned and chastened, and made to grow 
up with opposite tendencies, all alike tempered, none de- 
stroyed; none overgrowing the garden, but all filling it 
with their several fruits ; so that it shall be, indeed, the 
garden of the Lord, and the Spirit of the Lord shall 
dwell in the midst of it. 

And who shall dare to make sad the heart of him who 
is thus drinking dailj of the well-spring of righteousness, 
bj telling him that he is not jet saved, nor can be, unless 
he will come and bow down before his idol ? And if, 
rather than do so, he break the idol in pieces, who shall 
dare to call him profane, or cold in love to his Lord, when 
it was in his ver j jealous j for his Lord, and in his full 
purpose to worship him alone, that he threw down all that 
exalted itself above its due proportion against him ? And 
if a man be not so worshipping Christ onlj, who shall dare 
to encourage him in his evil waj, bj magnifjing the 
sacredness of his idol, and ascribing to it that healing 
virtue which belongs to Christ alone ? 



216 BUT ITS GREAT ENEMY. 

What has been here said might bear to be followed up 
at far greater length than the present occasion will admit 
of. But the main point is one, I think, of no small im- 
portance, that all fanaticism and superstition on the one 
hand, and all unbelief and coldness of heart on the other, 
arise from what is in fact idolatry, — the putting some 
other object, whether it be called a religious or moral one, 
— and an object often in itself very excellent, — in the 
place of Christ himself, as set forth to us fully in the 
Scriptures. And as no idol can stand in Christ's place, or 
in any way save us, so whoever worships Christ truly is 
preserved from all idols and has life eternal. And if any 
one demand of him further, that he should worship his 
idol, and tells him that he is not safe if he does not ; his 
answer will be rather that he will perish if he does ; that 
he is safe, fully safe, and only safe, so long as he clings to 
Christ alone ; and that to make anything else necessary to 
his safety, is not only to minister to superstition, but to 
ungodliness also ; not only to lay on us a yoke which 
neither our fathers nor we were able to bear ; but, by the 
very act of laying this unchristian yoke upon us, to tear 
from us the easy yoke and light burden of Christ himself, 
our Lord and our life. 



LECTURE XXI 



ADVENT SUNDAY. 



Hebretvs iii. 16. 

For some, iclien iliey liad heard, did provolce : howheit not all iTiat came 
out of Egypt by Moses. 

I TAKE tliis verse as my text, rather than those which 
immediately go before or follow it, because it affords one 
of the most serious instances of mistranslation that are to 
be met with in the whole New Testament. For the true 
translation of the words is this : "For who were they who, 
when they had heard, did provoke ? nay, were they not 
all who came out of Egypt through Moses ?" And then it 
goes on — " And with whom was he grieved forty years ? 
was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell 
in the wilderness ? And to whom sware he that they 
should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed 
not?" I call this a serious mistranslation, because it 
lessens the force of the writer's comparison. So far from 
meaning to say that "some, but not all did provoke," he 
lays a stress on the universality of the evil : it was not 
only a few, but the whole people who came out of Egypt, 
with only the two individual exceptions of Caleb and 
Joshua. All the rest who were grown up when they came 
out of Egypt did provoke God ; and the carcases of that 
whole generation fell in the wilderness. 

19 (217) 



218 now THE cnURCH REGARDS CHRISTMAS. 

Had the lesson from the Hebrews been actually chosen 
for the service of this day, it could hardly have suited 
it better. For this day is the New-year's day of the 
Christian year ; and it is probably for this reason that the 
service of the first day of the common year is confined 
entirely to the commemoration of our Lord's circumcision, 
and takes no notice of the beginning of a new year. It is 
manifest that it could not do so without confusion : for the 
first of January is not the beginning of the Christian year, 
but Advent Sunday ; the last Sunday of the Christian 
year is not Christmas-day, as it would be this year if we 
reckoned by the common divisions of time ; but it is the 
last Sunday after Trinity. Now, then, we are at the 
beginning of our year ; and well it is that, as our trial is 
now become shorter by another year, as another division 
of our lives has passed away, we should fix our eyes on 
that which makes every year so valuable, — the Judgment, 
for which it ought to be a preparation. In fact, if we 
observe, we shall see that these Sundays in Advent are 
much more regarded by the Church as the beginning of a 
new year, than as a mere prelude to the celebration of the 
festival of Christmas. That is, Christmas-day is regarded, 
so to speak, in a twofold light, as representing both the 
comings of our Lord, his first coming in the flesh, and his 
second coming to judgment. When the day actually 
arrives, it commemorates our Lord's first coming : and this 
is the beginning of the Christian year, historically 
regarded, that is, so far as it is a commemoration of the 
several events of our Lord's life on earth. But before it 
comes, it is regarded as commemorating our Lord's second 
coming : and wisely, for his first coming requires now no 
previous preparation for it ; we cannot well put ourselves 
into the position of those who lived before Christ appeared. 
But our whole life is, or ought to be, a preparation for his 



ITS SEASON IS TYPICAL. 219 

second coining ; and it is tliis state, of whicli tlie season 
of Advent in the Church services is intended to be the 
representation. 

There is something striking in the season of the natural 
year at which we thus celebrate the beginning of another 
Christian year. It is a true type of our condition, of the 
insensible manner in which all the changes of our lives 
steal upon us, that nature, at this moment, gives no out- 
ward sif^ns of beginning : it is a period which does not 
manifest any striking change in the state of things around 
us. The Christian Spring begins ere we have reached the 
half of the natural winter. Nature is not bursting into 
life, but rather preparing itself for a long period of death. 
And this is a type of an universal truth, that the signs 
and warnings which we must look to, must come from 
within us, not from without : that neither sky nor earth 
will arouse us from our deadly slumber, unless we are our- 
selves aroused already, and more disposed to make warn- 
ings for ourselves than to find them. 

If this be true of nature, it is true also of all the efibrts 
of man. As nature will give no sign, so man cannot. 
Let the Church do all that she may; let her keep her 
solemn anniversaries, and choose out for her services all 
such passages of Scripture as may be most fitted to 
impress the lesson which she would teach; still we know 
that these are altke powerless and unheeded ; that unless 
there be in our own minds something beforehand disposed 
to profit by them, they are but the words of unavailing 
afi"ection, vainly spoken to the ears of the dead. 

Oh that we would remember this, all of us ; that there is no 
voice in nature, no voice in man, that can really awaken the 
sleeping soul. That is the work of a far mightier power, to be 
sought for with most earnest prayers for ourselves and for 



.220 ITS ^YARNING IS UNHEEDED, 

each other : that the Holy Spirit of God would speak, and 
would dispose our hearts to hear ; that so being awakened 
from death and our ears being truly opened, all things out- 
ward may now join in language which we can hear ; and 
nature, and man, life and death, things present and things 
to come, may be but the manifold voices of the Spirit of God, 
all working for us together for good. Till this be so, we 
speak in vain ; our w^ords neither reach our own hearts, 
nor the hearts of our hearers ; they are but recorded in 
God's book of judgment, to be brought forward hereafter 
for the condemnation of us both. 

Yet we must still speak; for the Spirit of God, who 
alone works in us effectually, works also secretly ; we know 
not when, nor how, nor where. But we know, that as the 
Father worketh hitherto, and the Son worketh hitherto, so 
the Holy Spirit worketh hitherto, and is still working 
daily. We know that, every year, he creates in thousands 
of God's people that work which alone shall abide for 
ever. We know that in the year that is just past he has 
done this ; that in the year which is just beginning he will 
do it. Have we not here, also, many in whom he has 
wrought this work ? may we not hope, and surely believe, 
that there are many in whom he is even now preparing to 
work it ? 

We know not who these are ; still less do we know, what 
were the occasions which the Holy Spirit so blessed as to 
work in them his work of life. But this we know, that we 
are bound to minister all the occasions which we can ; we 
must not spare our labour, although it is God alone who 
gives the increase. We must speak of life and of death, 
of Christ and of judgment, not forgetting that we speak 
often, and shall speak, utterly in vain ; yet knowing that 
it is by these very thoughts, though long unheeded, that 
God's Spirit does in his own good time awaken the heart ; 



TILL THE SPIRIT OP GOD SPEAKS IN IT. 221 

he takes of the things of Christ and shows them to us ; 
and then, what was before like a book in a strange hin- 
gnage — we saw the figures, but they conveyed no meaning 
to our minds — becomes, on a sudden, instinct with the 
Language of God, which we hear and understand as readily 
as if it were our own tongue wherein we were born. 

Therefore, we speak and say, that another year has now 
dawned upon us ; and we would remind you, and remem- 
ber, ourselves, in what words the various Scriptures of this 
day's service point out its inestimable value. " Now is our 
salvation nearer than when we believed." So says St. Paul 
in the epistle of this day ; and how blessed are all those 
amongst us who can feel that this is truly said of them ! 
Then, indeed, a new year's day is a day of rejoicing ; we 
are so much nearer that period when all care, all anxiety, 
all painful labour will be for ever ended. But there is 
other language of a different sort, which, it may be, will 
suit us better. " I have nourished and brought up children, 
and they have rebelled against me." " Their land is full 
of idols ; they worship the work of their own hands, that 
which their own fingers have made ;" which means to us, 
the work of our own hearts, that which our own fancies 
and desires have made. ^' Enter into the rock, and hide 
thee in the dust, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of 
his majesty." For in the very temple of God, his Church, 
all manner of profane thoughts and words and works are 
crowded together ; the din of covetousness and worldliness 
is loud and constant, and will ill abide the day of his 
coming, who will, a second time, cast out of his temple all 
that is unclean. And is there not also in us that evil heart 
of unbelief and disobedience which departs from the living 
God ? are there not here those who are becoming daily 
hardened through the deceitfulness of sin ? How are they 
passing their time in the wilderness, and with what pros- 
19=^ 



222 god's kingdom still imperfect. 

pects -when tliey come to the end of it ? God said, " I 
sware in my wrath, that they shall not enter into my rest." 
By the way that they came, by the same shall they return ; 
they shall go back to that bondage from which they were 
once redeemed, and from which they will be redeemed 
again no more for ever. 

These are some of the passages of this day's service 
which speaks to us at the beginning of this new Christian 
year. Let me add to all this language of warning, the 
language in which God, by his apostle Paul, answers every 
one of us, if we ask of him in sincerity of heart, " Lord, 
what wilt thou have me to do ?" He answers, " The night 
is far spent, the day is at hand : let us walk honestly, as 
in the day ; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in cham- 
bering and wantonness, not in strife and envying : but put 
ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for 
the flesh, to fulfil the works thereof." Now, I grant, that 
this day, of which the apostle speaks, has never yet shone 
so brightly, as he had hoped and imagined ; clouds have, 
up to this hour, continually overshadowed it. I mean, that 
the lives of Christians have hindered them from being the 
light of the world. It has been a light pale and dim, and 
therefore the works of darkness have continued to abound. 
But admit this, and what follows ? Is it, or can it be, 
anything else but a more earnest desire not to be ourselves 
children of darkness, lest what we see to have happened in 
part should happen altogether; namely, that the day 
should never shine on us at all ? We see that God's pro- 
mises have been in part forfeited; we see that Christ's 
kingdom has not been what it was prophesied it should be. 
Is not this a solemn warning, that for us, too, individually, 
God's promises may be forfeited ? that all we read in 
Scripture of light, and life, and glory, and happiness, 
should really prove to us words only, and no reality ? that 



LET US EACH IN OURSELVES 223 

whereas the promise of salvation has been made to us, Tve 
should be in the end, not saved, but lost? If, indeed, 
God's kingdom Avere shining around us, in its full beauty ; 
if every evil thing were driven out of his temple ; if we 
saw nothing but holy lives and happy, the fruits of his 
Spirit, truth, and love, and joy ; then we might be less 
anxious for ourselves ; our course would be far smoother ; 
the very stream would carry us along to the end of our 
vovaixe without our labour : what evil thoughts would not 
be withered, and die long ere they could ripen into action, 
if the very air which we breathed were of such keen and 
heavenly purity ! It is because all this is not so, that we 
have need of so much watchfulness ; it is because the faults 
of every one of us make our brethren's task harder ; be- 
cause there is not one bad or careless person amongst us 
who is not a hindrance in his brother's path, and does not 
oblige him to exert himself the more. Therefore, because 
the day is not bright, but overclouded; because it is but 
too like the night, and too many use it as the night for all 
works of darkness ; let us take the more heed that we do 
not ourselves so mistake it ; let us watch each of us the 
light within us, lest, indeed, we should wholly stumble ; let 
us put on the Lord Jesus Christ. You know how often I 
have dwelt on this ; how often I have tried to show that 
Christ is all in all to us ; that to put on Christ, is a truer 
and fuller expression, by far, than if we had been told to 
put on truth, or holiness, or goodness. ■ It includes all 
these, with something more, that nothing but itself can 
give — the sense of safety, and joy unspeakable, in feeling 
ourselves sheltered in our Saviour's arms, and taken even 
into himself. Assuredly, if we put on the Lord Jesus 
, Christ, we shall not make provision for the flesh to fulfil 
the lusts thereof; such a warning would then be wholly 
unnecessary. Or, if wc do not like language thus figurative, 



224 TRY TO PERFECT IT. 

let US put it, if we -will, into the plainest words that shall 
express the same meaning ; let us call it praying to Christ, 
thinking of him, hoping in him, earnestly loving him ; 
these, at least, are words without a figure, which all can 
surely understand. Let us be Christ's this year that is 
now beginning ; be his servants, be his disciples, be his 
redeemed in deed ; let us live to him, and for him ; setting 
him before us every day to do his will, and to live in his 
blessing. Then, indeed, if it be his pleasure that we should 
serve him throughout this year, even to its end, we may 
repeat, with a deeper feeling of their truth, the words of 
St. Paul ; we may say, when next Advent Sunday shall 
appear, that now is our salvation nearer than when we 
became believers. 



LECTURE XXII. 



CHRISTMAS DAY. 



John i. 10. 

He icas in the loorld, and the icorld was made hy Him, and the icorld 
knew Him not. 

When tvc use ourselves, or hear others use, the term 
"mystery,'-' as applied to things belonging to the gospel, 
"we should do well to consider what is meant by it. For 
our common notion of the word mystery is of something 
dark ; whereas Christ and his gospel are continually 
spoken of as being, above all other things, light. Then 
come others, and say, "Light and darkness cannot go 
together : what you call the mysteries of Christianity are 
no part of it, but the fond inventions of man : Christianity 
is all simple and clear:" and thus they strike away some 
of the very greatest truths which God has revealed to us. 
Thus they deal in particular with the great truth declared 
in the text, that He who made the world visited it in the 
likeness of man. Now, if this truth were a mystery, in 
the common notion of that term ; if it were a thing full 
of darkness, defying our minds to understand it, or to 
draw any good from it ; then, indeed, it would be of little 
consequence whether we received it or no. It is because 
it is a mystery in a very different sense, in the sense in 
which the word is used commonly in the Scriptures ; that 

(225) 



226 CHRISTIAN MYSTERIES ARE REVELATIONS. 

is, a tiling which was a secret, bat which God has been 
pleased to reveal, and to reveal for our benefit, that there- 
fore the loss of it would be the loss of a real blessing, a loss 
at once of light and comfort. 

But we must go a little further, and explain from what 
this sad confusion in the use of the term "mystery" has 
arisen. There are many things relating to ourselves 
and to things around us, which by nature we cannot un- 
derstand ; and of God we can scarcely understand any- 
thing. Now, while the gospel has revealed much that we 
did not know before, it yet has not revealed everything : 
of God, in particular, it has given us much most precious 
knowledge, yet it has not removed all the veil. It has 
furnished us with a glass, indeed, to use the apostle's 
comparison ; but the glass, although a great help, although 
reflecting a likeness of what, without it, we could not see 
at all, is yet a dark and imperfect manner of seeing, com- 
pared with the seeing face to face. So, when the gospel 
tells us that He who made the world visited it in our 
nature, it does not indeed enable us yet fully to conceive 
what He is who made us, and then became as one of us ; 
there is still left around the name of God that light inac- 
cessible which is to our imperfections darkness ; and so far 
as we cannot understand or conceive rightly of God, so 
far it is true that we cannot understand all that is con- 
ve^^ed in the expression that God Avas in the world dwell- 
ing among us. Yet it is still most true that by the reve- 
lation thus made to us we have gained immensely. God, 
as he is in himself, we cannot understand ; but Jesus 
Christ we can. When we are told to love God, if we look 
to the life and death of Christ, we can understand and 
feel how truly he deserves our love; when we are told to 
be perfect as God is perfect, we have the image of this 
perfection so truly set before us in his Son Jesus, that it 



REVELATION OF GOD IX THE FLESH. 227 

may be well said, " Wlioso liatli seen Him hath seen the 
Father ;" and why, then, should we ask with Philip, that 
'' He should show us the Father?" 

What, then, the festival of Christmas presents to us, as 
distinct from that of Easter, is generally the revelation of 
God in the flesh. True it is, that we may make it, if we 
will, the same as Easter : that is, we may celebrate it as 
the birth of our Saviour, of him who died and rose again 
for us ; but then we only celebrate our Lord's birth with 
reference to his death and resurrection : that is, we make 
Christmas to be Easter under another name. And so 
everything relating to our Lord may be made to refer to 
his death and resurrection ; for in them consists our re- 
demption, and for that reason Easter has ever been con- 
sidered as the great festival of the Christian year. But 
yet apart from this, Christmas has something peculiarly 
its own : namely, as I said before, the revelation of God 
in the flesh, not only to make atonement for our sins, — 
which is the peculiar subject of the celebration of the 
season of Easter, — but to give us notions of God at once 
distinct and lively ; to enable us to have One in the in- 
visible world, whom we could conceive of as distinctly as 
of a mere man, yet whom we might love with all our 
hearts, and trust with all our hearts, and yet be guilty of 
no idolatry. 

It is not, then, only as the beginning of an earthly life 
of little more than thirty years, that we may celebrate the 
day of our Lord's birth in the flesh. His own words ex- 
press what this day has brought to us : " Henceforth shall 
ye see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending 
and descending upon the Son of man." The words here, 
like so many of our Lord's, are expressed in a parable ; 
but their meaning is not the less clear. They allude evi- 
dently to Jacob's vision, to the ladder reaching from earth 



228 TTS PECrLIAK VALUE, 

to heaven, on wliich the angels were ascending and descend- 
ing continually. But this. vision is itself a parable ; show- 
ing, under the figure of the ladder reaching from earth to 
heaven, and the angels going up and down on it, a free 
communication, as it were, between God and man, heaven 
brought nearer to earth, and heavenly things made more 
familiar. Now, this is done, in a manner, by every revela- 
tion from God ; most of all, by the revelation of his Son. 
Nor is it only by his Spu-it that Christ communicates with 
us even now ; though he is ascended again into heaven, yet 
the benefits of his ha\dng become man, over and above 
those of his dying and rising again for us, have not yet 
passed away. It is still the man Christ Jesus who brings 
heaven near to earth, and earth near to heaven. 

It has been well said by Augustine, that babes in Christ 
should so think of the Son of man as not to lose sight 
of the Son of God ; that more advanced Christians should 
so think of the Son of God as not to lose sight of the Son 
of man. Augustine well understood how the thought of 
the Son of man is fitted to our weakness; and that the 
best and most advanced of us in this mortal life are 
never so strong as to be able to do without it. Have 
we ever tried this with our children ? We tell them 
that God made them, and takes care of them, and loves 
them, and hears their prayers, and knows what is in their 
hearts, and cannot bear what is evil. These are such 
notions of God as a child requires, and can understand. 
But, if we join with them some of those other notions which 
belong to God as he is in himself ; that he is a Spirit, not 
to be seen, not to be conceived of as in any one place, or 
in any one form ; what do we but embarrass our child's 
mind, and lessen that sense of near and dear relation to 
God which our earlier accounts of God had given him ? 
Yet we must teach him something of this sort, if we would 
prevent him from forming unworthy notions of God, such 



AS MAKING GOD CONCEIVABLE. 229 

as lia>ve been the beginning of all idolatry. Here, then, 
is the blessing of the revelation of God in Christ. All 
that he can understand of God, or love in him, or fear in 
him — that is to be found in Christ. Christ made him, 
takes care of him, can hear his prayers, can read his little 
heart, loves him tenderly ; yet cannot bear what is evil, 
and will strictly judge him at the last day. But what we 
must teach when we speak of God, yet which has a ten- 
dency to lessen the liveliness of our impressions of him, 
this has no place when we speak of Christ. Christ has a 
body, incorruptible and glorified indeed, such as they who 
are Christ's shall also wear at his coming, yet still a body. 
Christ is not to be seen, indeed, for the clouds have re- 
ceived him out of. our sight: yet he may be conceived of 
as in one place — at the right hand of God ; as in one 
certain and well-known form — the form of the Son of man. 
Yet let us observe again, and be thankful for the perfect 
wisdom of God. Even while presenting to us God in 
Christ ; that is to say, God with all those attributes which 
we can understand, and fear, and love ; and without those 
which throw us, as it were, to an infinite distance, over- 
whelming our minds, and baffling all our conceptions ; even 
then the utmost care is taken to make us remember that 
God in himself is really that infinite and incomprehensible 
Being to whom we cannot, in our present state, approach ; 
that even his manifestation of himself in Christ Jesus, is 
one less perfect than we shall be permitted to see here- 
after ; that Christ stands at the right hand of the Majesty 
on high ; that he has received from the Father all his 
kingdom and his glory ; finally, that the Father is greater 
than he, inasmuch as any other nature added to the pure 
and perfect essence of God, must, in a certain measure, if 
I may venture so to speak, be a coming down to a lower 
point, from the very and unmixed Divinity. 
20 



230 SCRIPTURE TEACHES THIS CAREFULLY. 

I have purposely mentioned this hast circumstance, 
although it is not the view that I wish particularly to take 
to-day, because such passages as that which I quoted, 
where Christ tells his disciples that his Father was greater 
than he, and many others of the same sort, throughout the 
New Testament, are sometimes apt to embarrass and 
perplex us, if we do not consider their peculiar object. It 
was very necessary, especially at a time when men were so 
accustomed to worship their highest gods under the form 
of men, that whilst the gospel was itself holding out the 
man Christ Jesus as the object of religious faith, and fear, 
and love, and teaching that all power was given to him, in 
heaven and in earth, — it should, also, guard us against 
supposing that it meant to represent God as, in himself, 
wearing a human form, or having a nature partaking of 
our infirmities ; and, therefore, it always speaks of there 
being something in God higher, and more perfect, than 
could possibly be revealed to man ; and for this eternal 
and infinite, and inconceivable Being, it claims the reserve 
of our highest thoughts, or, rather, it commands us to 
believe, that they who shall hereafter see God face to face, 
shall be allowed to see something still greater than is now 
revealed to us, even in him who is the express image of 
God, and the brightness of his glory. 

But, now, to return to what I was dwelling on before. 
It is not only for children, that the revelation of God in 
Christ is so valuable ; it is fitted to the wants of us all, at 
all times, and under all circumstances. Say, that we are 
in joy ; say, that we are enjoying some of the festivities of 
this season. It is quite plain, that, at whatever moment 
the thought of God is unwelcome to us, that moment is one 
of sin or unbelief : yet, how can we dare to mix up the 
notion of the most high God with any earthly merriment, 
or festivity ? Then, if we think of him who was present at 



CHRIST AMONGST US. 231 

the marriage in Cana of Galilee, and who worked a 
miracle for no other object than to increase the enjoyment 
of that marriage supper, do we not feel how the highest 
thoughts may be joined with the most common occasions ? 
how we may bring Christ home with us to our social meet- 
ings, to bless us, and to sanctify them ? Imagine him in 
our feasts as he was in Cana : — we may do it without pro- 
faneness ; being sure, from that example, that he condemns 
not innocent mirth ; that it is not merely because there is 
a feast, or because friends and neighbours are gathered 
together, that Christ cannot, therefore, be in the midst of 
us. This alone does not drive him away ; but, oh consider, 
with what ears would he have listened to any words of 
unkindness, of profaneness, or of impurity ! with what 
eyes would he have viewed any intemperance, or revelling ; 
any such immoderate yielding up of the night to pleasure, 
that a less portion of the next day can be given to duty 
and to God ! Even as he would have heard or seen such 
things in Cana of Galilee, so does he hear and see them 
amongst us ; the same gracious eye of love is on our 
moderate and permitted enjoyments ; the same turning 
away from, the same firm and just displeasui'e at every 
word or deed which turns pleasure into sin. 

But if I seek for instances to show how God in Christ is 
brought very near to us, what can I choose more striking 
than that most solemn act of Christian communion to 
which we are called this day ? For, what is there in our 
mortal life, what joy, what sorrow, what feeling elated or 
subdued, which is not in that communion brought near to 
Christ to receive his blessing ? What is the first and out- 
ward thing of which it reminds us ? Is it not that last 
supper in Jerusalem, in which men, — the twelve disciples, 
the first members of our Christian brotherhood, — were 
brousrht into such solemn nearness to God, as seems to 



232 IN THE HOLY COMMUNION, 

have begun the privileges of heaven upon earth ? They 
were brought near at once to Christ and to one another : 
united to one another in him, in that double bond which is 
the perfection at once of our duty and of our happiness. 
And so in our communion we, too, draw near to Christ 
and to each other ; we feel — who is there at that moment, 
at least, that does not feel ? — what a tie there is to bind 
each of us to his brother, when we come to the table of 
our common Lord. So far, the Lord's Supper is but a 
type of what every Christian meeting should be: never 
should any of us be gathered together on any occasion of 
common life, in our families or with our neighbours ; we 
should sit down to no meal, we should meet in no compa- 
ny, without having Christ also in the midst of us ; without 
remembering what we all are to him, and what we each 
therefore are to our brethren. But when we further 
recollect what there is in the Lord's Supper beyond the 
mere meeting of Christ and his disciples ; what it is which 
the bread and the wine commemorate ; of what we partake 
when, as true Christians, we eat of that bread, and drink 
of that cup ; then we shall understand that God indeed is 
brought very near to us ; inasmuch as he who is a Chris- 
tian, and partakes sincerely of Christian communion, is a 
partaker also of Christ : and as belonging to his body, his 
living spiritual body, the universal Church, receives his 
share of all those blessings, of all that infinite love which 
the Father shows continually to the head of that body, his 
own well-beloved Son. 

Say not then in your hearts, "Who can ascend up into 
heaven, that is, to bring Christ down ? As on this day, 
when he took our nature upon him, he came down to abide 
with us for ever ; to abide with us, even when we should 
see him with our eyes no more : for whilst he was on 
earth he so took part in 'all the concerns of life, in all its 



AND IN ALL PLACES. 233 

duties, its sorrows, and its joys, that memory, wlien look- 
ing back on the past, can fancy him present still ; and 
then let the liveliest fancy do its work to the utmost, it 
cannot go beyond the reality ; he is present still, for that 
belongs to his almightiness ; he is present with us, because 
he is God ; and we can fancy him with us, because he is 
man. This is the way to lessen our distance from God 
and heaven, by bringing Christ continually to us on 
earth : the sky is closed, and shows no sign ; all things 
continue as they were from the beginning of the world ; 
evil abounds, and therefore the faith of many waxes 
cold ; but Christ was and is amongst us ; and we need no 
surer sign than that sign of the prophet Jonah — Christ 
crucified and Christ risen — to make us feel that we may 
live with God daily upon earth, and doing so, shall live, 
with him for an eternal life, in a country that cannot pass 
away. 



20* 



LECTURE XXITI. 



SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE EASTER. 



Matthew xxvi. 40, 41 



WJiat, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that 
ye enter not into temptation : the spirit indeed is willing, hut the 
jiesh is weak. 

These words, we cannot doubt, have an application to 
ourselves, and to all Christians, far beyond the particular 
occasion on which they were actually spoken. They are, 
in fact, the words which Christ addresses daily to all of 
us. Every day, when he sees how often we have gone 
astray from him, he repeats to us. Could ye not watch 
with me one hour ? Every day he commands us to watch 
and pray, that we enter not into temptation ; every day 
he reminds us, that however willing may be our spirits, 
yet our flesh is weak ; and that through that weakness, sin 
prevails over it, and having triumphed over our flesh, pro- 
ceeds to enslave our spirit also. 

And as the words are applicable to us every day, so 
also are they in a particular manner suitable now, when 
the season of Lent is so nearly over, and Easter is so fast 
approaching. Have we been unable to watch with Christ 
one hour? Already are the good resolutions with which 
we, perhaps, began Lent, broken in many instances ; and 
the impressions, if any such were made in us, are already 

(234) 



WATCHING WITH CHRIST. 235 

weakened. They have been a burden, which we have 
shaken off, because the weakness of our nature found it 
too heavy to bear. Sad it is to think how often this same 
process has been repeated in all time, how often it will be 
repeated to the end. 

Let us just review what the course of this process has 
probably been. Now, as the parable of the Sower de- 
scribes three several sorts of persons, who never bring 
forth fruit ; so in the very same persons, there is at diffe- 
rent times something of each of the three characters 
there described. We, the very same persons, are at one 
time hard, at another careless, and at another over-busy ; 
although, if compared with other persons, and in the 
general form of their characters, some are hard, and 
others are careless, and others over-busy ; different persons 
having different faults predominantly. But even the 
hardness of the road side, although God forbid that it 
should be our prevailing temper, yet surely it does some- 
times exist in too many of us. In common speech, we 
talk of a person showing a hard temper, meaning, gene- 
rally, a hard temper towards other men. We have done 
wrong, but being angry when we are reproved for it, we 
will not acknowledge it at all, and cheat our consciences, 
by dwelling upon the supposed wrong that has been done 
to us in some over-severity of reproof or punishment, in- 
stead of confessing and repenting of the original wrong 
which we ourselves did. But is it not true, that a hard 
temper towards man is very often, even consciously, a 
hard temper towards God? Does it never happen, that 
if conscience presents to us the thought of God, whether 
as a God of judgment to terrify us, or as a God of love to 
melt us, we repel it with impatience, or with sullenness ? 
Does not the heart sometimes almost speak aloud the 
language of blasphemy : Who is God, that I should mind 



236 THE CARELESS WILL NOT WATCH. 

him ? I do not care what may happen, I will not be 
softened. Do not all sorts of unbelieving thoughts pass 
rapidly through the mind at such moments ; first in their 
less daring form, whispering, as the serpent did to Eve, 
that we shall not surely die ; that we shall have time to 
repent by and by; that God will not be so strict a judge 
as to condemn us for such a little ; that by some means 
or other, we shall escape ? But then they come, also, in 
their bolder form : What do I or any man know about 
another world, or God's judgments ? may it not be all a 
fiction, so that I have, in reality, nothing to fear? In 
short, under one form or another, is it not true, that our 
hearts have sometimes displayed actually hardness towards 
God ; that the thought of God has been actually pre- 
sented to our minds, but that we have turned it aside, and 
have not sufi'ered it to make any impression upon us ? 
And thus, we have not only not watched with Christ ac- 
cording to his command, but have actually told him that 
we would not. But this has been in our worst temper, 
certainly ; it may not have happened, — I trust that it has 
not happened often. More commonly, I dare say, the 
fault has been carelessness. We have gone out of this 
place ; sacred names have ceased to sound in our ears ; 
sights in any degree connected with holy things have been 
all withdrawn from us. Other sounds and other sights 
have been before us, and our minds have yielded to them 
altogether. There are minds, indeed, which have no 
spring of thought in themselves ; which are quiet, and in 
truth empty, till some outward objects come to engage 
them. Take them at a moment when they are alone, or 
when there is no very interesting object before them, and 
ask them of what they are thinking. If the answer were 
truly given, such a mind would say, " Of nothing.'*^ 
Certain images may be faintly presented to it ; it may be 



23T 

that it is not altogether a blank ; yet it could not name 
anything distinctly. No form had been vivid enough to 
produce any corresponding resolution in us ; vre were, as 
it were, in a state between sleeping and waking, with 
neither thoughts nor dreams definite enough to afi'ect us. 
This state finds exactly all that it desires in the presence 
or the near hope of outward objects ; the mind lives in its 
daily pursuits, and companions, and amusements. What 
impressions have been once produced are soon worn 
away ; and in a soil so shallow nothing makes a durable 
impression : everything can, as it were, scratch upon its 
surface, while nothing can strike deeply down within. 

Or, again, take the rarer case of those who are over- 
busy. There are minds, undoubtedly, which are as in- 
capable of rest as those of the generality of men are prone 
to it ; there are minds which enter keenly into everything 
presented to them by their outward senses, and which, 
when their senses cease to supply them, have an inexhaust- 
ible source of thought within, which furnishes them with 
abundant matter of reflection or of speculation. To such a 
mind, doing is most delightful; whether it be outward 
doing, or the mere exercise of thought, either supplies alike 
the consciousness of power. Where, then, is there room 
for the less obtruding things of God ? Into that restless 
water, another and another image is for ever stepping 
down, pushing aside and keeping at a distance the sober- 
ing reflections of God and of Christ. Alas ! the thorns 
grow so vigorously in such a soil, that they altogether 
choke and kill the seed of God's word. 

So, then, we are either asleep, or, if we are awake, we 
are not waking with Christ. On one side, in that garden 
of Getbsemane were the disciples sleeping; below, and 
fast ascending the hill, — not sleeping, certainly, but with 
lanterns and torches and weapons, — were those whose 



238 "WHICH, THOUGH CHRISTIANS IN NAJWE, 

•waiving was for evil. Where were they who watched with 
Christ one hour then, — or w^here are those who watch with 
him now ? 

How gently, yet how^ earnestly, does he call upon us to 
^' watch and pray, lest, we enter into temptation." To 
watch and to pray : for of all those around him some were 
sleeping, and none were praying ; so that they who watched 
were not watching with him, but against him. In our 
careless state of mind the call to us is to watch ; in our 
over-busy state the call to us is to pray ; in our hard state 
there is equal need for both. And even in our best moods, 
when we are not hard, nor careless, nor over-busy, when 
we are at once sober and earnest and gentle, then not 
least does Christ call upon us to watch and to pray, that 
we may retain that than which else no gleam of April sun- 
shine was ever more fleeting ; that we may perfect that 
which else is of the earth, earthly, and when we lie down 
in the dust will wither and come to dust also. 

Jesus Christ brought life and immortality, it is said, to 
light through the gospel. He brought life and immortality 
to light : — is this indeed true as far as we are concerned ? 
"What do we think would be the difference in this point 
between many of us — who will dare say how many ? — and 
a school, I will not say of Jewish, but even of Greek or 
Roman or Egyptian boys, eighteen hundred, or twenty- 
four hundred, or three or four thousand years ago ? Com- 
pare us at our worship with them, and then, I grant, the 
difference would appear enormous. We have no images, 
making the glory of the incorruptible God like to corrupt- 
ible man ; we have no vain stream of incense ; no shedding 
of the blood of bulls and calves in sacrifice : the hymns 
which are sung here are not vain repetitions or impious 
fables, which gave no word of answer to those questions 
Tvhich it most concerns mankind to know. Here, indeed, 



WE YET NEED AS IF WE WERE nEATKENS. 239 

Jesus Christ is truly set forth crucified among us ; here 
life and immortality are brought to light. But follow us 
out of this place, — to our respective pursuits and amuse- 
ments, to our social meetings, or our times of solitary 
thought, — and wherein do we seem to see life and immor- 
tality more brightly revealed than to those heathen schools 
of old ? Do we enjoy any worldly good less keenly, or 
less shrink from any worldly evil ? Death, which to the 
heathen view was the end of all things, is to us (so our 
language goes) the gate of life. Do we think of it with 
more hope and less fear than the heathen did ? Christ 
has risen, and has reconciled us to God. Is God more to 
us ? — God now revealed to us as our reconciled Father — 
do we oftener think of him, do we love him better, than he 
was thought of and loved in those heathen schools, which 
had Homer's poetry for their only gospel ? We talk of 
light, of revelation, of the knowledge of God, while verily 
and really we are walking, not in light, but in darkness : 
not in knowledge of God, but in blindness and hardness 
of heart. 

" The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." 
How great is the loving-kindness of these words, — how 
gently does Christ bear with the weakness of his disciples ! 
But this thought may be the most blessed or the most 
dangerous thought in the world ; the most blessed if it 
touches us with love, the most dangerous if it emboldens 
us in sin. He is full of loving-kindness, full of long-suffer- 
ing ; for days, and weeks, and months, and years he bears 
with us : we grieve him, and he entreats ; we crucify him 
afresh, yet he will not come down from the cross in power 
and majesty ; he endures and spares. So it is for days, 
and months, and years ; for some years it may be to most 
of us, — for many years to some of the youngest. There 
may be some here who may go on grieving Christ, and 



240 WHAT IF WE DO NOT WATCH AND PRAY? 

crucifying him afresh, for as much as seventy years ; and 
he will bear with them all that time, and his sun will daily 
shine upon them, and his creatures and his word will 
minister to their pleasure ; and he himself will say nothing 
to them but to entreat them to turn and be saved. This 
may last, I say, to some amongst us for seventy years; to 
others it may last fifty ; to many of us it may last for 
forty, or for thirty ; none of us, perhaps, are so old but 
that it may last with us twenty, or at the least ten. Such 
is the prospect before us, if we like it : not to be depended 
upon with certainty, it is true, but yet to be regarded as 
probable. But as these ten, or twenty, or fifty, or seventy 
years pass on, .Christ will still spare us, but his voice of 
entreaty will be less often heard ; the distance between him 
and us will be consciously wider. From one place after 
another where we once used sometimes to see him, he will 
have departed ; year after year some object which used 
once to catch the light from heaven, will have become 
overgrown, and will lie constantly in gloom; year after 
year the world will become to us more entirely devoid of 
God. If sorrow, or some softening joy ever turns our 
minds towards Christ, we shall be startled at perceiving 
there is something which keeps us from him, that we can- 
not earnestly believe in him ; that if we speak of loving 
him, our hearts, which can still love earthly things, feel 
that the words are but mockery. Alas, alas ! the increased 
weakness of our flesh has destroyed all the power of our 
spirit, and almost all its willingness : it is bound with 
chains which it cannot break, and, indeed, scarcely desires 
to break. Redemption, Salvation, Victory, — what words 
are these when applied to that enslaved, that lost, that 
utterly overthrown and vanquished soul, which sin is lead- 
ing in triumph now, and which will speedily be given over to 
walk for ever as a captive in the eternal triumph of death ! 



LET US HELP ONE ANOTHER TO DO SO. 241 

Not one word of wliat I have said is raised beyond the 
simplest expression of truth ; this is our portion if we will 
not watch with Christ. We know how often we have 
failed to do so, either sleeping in carelessness, or being 
busy and wakeful, but not with him or for him. Still he 
calls us to watch and pray, lest we enter into temptation ; 
to mark our lives and actions ; to mark them often ; to see 
whether we have done well or ill in the month past, or in 
the week past, or in the day past ; to consider whether we 
are better than we were, or worse ; whether we think Christ 
loves us better, or worse ; whether we are more or less 
cold towards him. I know not what else can be called 
watching with Christ than such a looking into ourselves as 
we are in his sight. It is very hard to be done ; — yes, it 
is hard — harder than anything probably which we ever 
attempted before ; and, therefore, we must pray withal for 
his help, whose strength is perfected in our weakness. 
And if it be so hard, and we have need so greatly to pray 
for God's help, should we not all also be anxious to help 
one another ? And knowing, as we do from our own con- 
sciences, how difficult it is to watch vfith Christ, and how 
thankful we should be to any one who were to make it 
easier to us, should we not be sure that our neighbour is 
in like case with ourselves ; that our help may be as useful 
to him as we feel that his would be to us ? This is our 
bounden duty of love towards one another ; what then 
should be said of us if we not only neglect this duty, but 
do the very contrary to it ; if we actually help the evil in 
our brother's heart to destroy him more entirely ; if we 
will not watch with Christ ourselves, and strive to prevent 
others from doing so ? 

21 



LECTUEE XXIY 



GOOD FRIDAY. 



EOMANS V. 8. 

God commendetli his love toivards us, in tJiat, while we were yet 
sinners, Christ died for us. 

We all remember the story in tlie Gospel, of tlie diffe- 
rent treatment which our Lord met with in the same house, 
from the Pharisee, who had invited him into it, and from 
the woman who came in and knelt at his feet, an-l kissed 
them, and bathed them with her tears. Our Lord ac- 
counted for the diiference in these words, *' To wh'-m little 
is forgiven, the same loveth little ;" which means lo speak 
of the sense or feeling in the person's own mind, *' He 
who feels that little is or needs to be forgiven him, he also 
loves little." And this same difference which existed 
toward him when he was present on earth, exists no less 
now, w^henever he is brought before our thoughts. The 
same sort of persons who saw him with indifference, think 
of him also with indifference ; they who saw him with love, 
think of him also with love. There is no art, no power in 
the world, which can give an interest to words spo::en con- 
cerning him, for those who feel that little is and that little 
needs to be forgiven them, or to those wdio never consider 
about their being forgiven at all. To such, this di.ij, with 
its services, what they hear from the Scriptures, or what 

(242) 



INDIFFERENCE OF MAXY HEARERS. 243 

they hear from men, must be alike a matter of indifference : 
it is net possible that it should be otherwise. Yet, God 
forbid ;hat we should design what we are saying this day 
only fo" a certain few of our congregation, as if the rest 
neither would nor could be interested in it. So long as 
any one is careless, he cannot, it is true, be interested 
about the thirgs of Christ; but who can say at what 
moment, through God's grace, he may cease to be care- 
less ? Is it too much to say, that scarcely a service is per- 
formed in any congregation in the land, which does not 
awaken an interest in some one who before was indifferent ? 
I do rot say a deep interest, nor a lasting one, but an 
interest ; there is a thought, a heeding, an inclination of 
the mind to listen, created probably by the Church ser- 
vices ir some one or other, every time that they are per- 
formed. As we never can know in whom this may be so 
created, as all have great need that it should be created, 
as all ire deeply concerned whether they feel that they 
are 50 or no, so we speak to all alike ; and if the lan- 
guage does pass over their ears like an unknown or indis- 
tinct srund, the fault and the loss are theirs ; but the 
Church has borne her witness, and has so far done her 
duty. 

But again, for ears not careless, but most interested ; 
for hearts to whom Christ is more than all in the world 
besides ; for minds, before whom the wisdom of the gospel 
is ever growing, rising to a loftier height, and striking 
downwards to a depth more profound, — yet without end in 
its heirht or its depth ; is there not, also, a difficulty in 
speakirg to them of that great thing which the Church 
celebra es to-day ? Is there no difficulty in awakening 
their interest, or rather how can we escape even from 
wearying or repelling them, when their own affections and 
deep thoughts must find all vrords of man, whether of 



244 

themselves or otlicrs, infinitely unworthy to express either 
the one or the other ? To such, then, the words of the 
preacher may be no more than music without any words 
at all ; which does but serve to lead and accompany our 
own thoughts, without distinctly suggesting any thoughts 
of another to interrupt the workings of our own minds. 
We would speak of Christ's death ; most good it is for us 
and for you to think upon it ; so far as our words suit the 
current of your own thoughts, use them and listen to 
them ; so far as they are a too unworthy expression of 
what we ought to think and feel, follow your own reflec- 
tions, and let the words neither offend you nor distract 

I would endeavour just to touch upon some of the pur- 
poses for which the Scripture tells us that Christ died, and 
for which his death was declared to be the great object of 
our faith. This done in the simplest and fewest words 
will best show the infinite greatness of the subject ; and 
how truly it is, so to speak, the central point of Chris- 
tianity. 

First of all, Christ died as a proper sacrifice for sin ; as 
a sacrifice, the virtue of which is altogether distinct from 
our knowledge of it, or from any effect which it has a 
tendency to produce on our own minds. We are forgiven 
for his sake ; we are acquitted through his death, and 
through faith in his blood. What a view does this open, 
partially, indeed, — for what mortal eye can reach to the 
end of it ? — of the evil of sin, and of God's love ! of what 
God's justice required, and of what God's love fulfilled ! 
This great sacrifice was made once, but it will not be 
made again ; for those who despise this there remains na 
more offering for sin, but their sin abideth with them for 
ever. 

Secondly, Christ's death is revealed to us as a motive 



PURPOSES OF Christ's death. 245 

capable of overcoming all temptations to evil. ^' How 
much more shall the blood of Christ purge your conscience 
from doad works to serve the living God ?" " He suf- 
fered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring 
us to God;" that is, that a consideration of what Christ's 
death declares to us should have power to melt the hard- 
est hea 't, and to sober the lightest : that, when we think 
of Chriiit dying, dying for us, and so pui'chasing for us the 
forgiveness of sins, and everlasting life, such a love, and 
such a prospect of peace with God, and of glory, should in 
the highest degree soften and enkindle us ; and from love 
for him, and confidence of hope through the prospect 
which lie has given us, we should be able to overcome all 
temptations. "I am persuaded," says St. Paul, "that 
neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor 
powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor 
height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to 
separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus 
our Lord." 

Thirdly, Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example 
that wc should follow his steps. He left us an example of 
all meekness, and patience, and humility ; he left us an 
example of perfect submission to God's will ; he left us an 
infinite comfort by letting us feel when we are in any 
trouble, or pain, or affliction, that he was troubled too; 
that he knew pain, and endured affliction. Above all, in 
that hour which must come to all of us, he has left us the 
greatest of all supports; — for he endured to die ; and we 
may enter with less fear into the darkness of the grave, 
for even there Christ has been for our sakes, and arose 
from out of it a conqueror. 

Fouithly, Christ died that he might gather together in 
one the children of God that were scattered abroad ; he 
died to purchase to himself his universal Church. So it 



246 OKE OP THESE NOT FULFILLED. 

is said in the Scriptures : and on this particular purpose 
of his death it may not be amiss to d-vvell, for none so 
needs to be held in remembrance. Many there are, and 
ever have been, who have rested their whole hope towards 
God on his sacrifice ; many v/ho have learnt from his cross 
to overcome sin ; from his resurrection to overcome the 
world ; many who, amidst all the troubles of life, and in 
the hour of death, have been supported by the thought of 
his example. But where is his universal Church ? where 
the company of God's childi'en gathered together into one? 
where is the city set upon the hill, that cannot be hid? 
where is the visible kingdom of God, where all its people 
are striving under one Divine Head, against sin, the 
world, and the devil ? This is the sign which we look for 
and cannot find ; this is the fulfilment of the prophecies 
for which we seem destined to wait in vain. 

And what if, on the contrary, that which is called the 
Church act rather the part of the world ; if our worst foes 
be truly those of our own household : if they who should 
have been for our help, be rather an occasion of falling : 
if one of our greatest difficulties in following Christ 
steadily, arise from the total want of encouragement, yea, 
often from the direct opposition of those who are them- 
selves pledged to follow him to the death ; if that Church, 
which was to have been the clearest sign to the world of 
the truth of Christ's gospel, be now, in many respects, 
rather a stumbling-block to the adversary and unbeliever, 
so that the name of God is through us blasphemed among 
the heathen, rather than glorified ; may we not humble 
ourselves before God in sorrow and in shame ? and must 
we not confess, that through our sin, and the sin of our 
fathers, Christ, in respect of this one purpose of his death, 
has as yet died in vain ? 

Israel after the flesh, lamenting their Jerusalem which 



THE CHURCH IX RUINS. 247 

is now not theirs, and mourning oygi* their ruined temple, 
in all their synagogues repeat constantly the prayer, 
' Lord, build thou the walls of Jerusalem ! Lord, build ! 
Lord, build ! Lord, build ! is the solemn chorus, 
marking by its repetition the earnestness of their desire. 
And should not this be the prayer of the Israel of God, 
scattered now as they are into their thousand divided and 
corrupted synagogues, and no token to be seen of the pure 
and univei'^al Church, the living temple of the Spirit of 
God ; should not we too, privately and publicly, join in 
the prayer of the earthly Israel, and pray that Christ 
would build for us the walls of our true Jerusalem ? For 
only think what it would be, if Christ's Church existed 
more than in name ; consider what it would be if baptism 
were a real bond ; if we looked on one another as brethren, 
redeemed by one ransom, pledged to one service ; if we 
bore with one another's weaknesses ; if we helped one 
another's endeavours ; if each saw and heard, in the words 
and life of his neighbour, an image of Christ, and a 
pledge of the truth of his promises. Consider what it 
would be, if, with no quarrels, with no jealousies, with no 
unkindness, we sought not every m;in his own, but every 
man also another's welfare ; as true members one of 
another, — of one body, of which Christ is the head. 
Consider what it would be, if our judgments of men and 
things were like Christ's judgments ; neither strengthen- 
ing the heart of the careless and sinful by our laxity, nor 
making sad the heart of God's true servant by our 
uncharitableness ; not putting little things in the place 
of great, nor great things in the place of little ; not 
neglecting the unity of the Spirit ; not stickling for a 
^sameness in the form. Or, if we carry our ^^ews a little 
wider ; if we look out upon the world at large, and hear 
of rumours of wars, and see the signs of internal disorders, 



248 THE CHURCH IN RUINS. 

and perhaps may think that the clouds are gathering 
which herald one of the comings of the Son of man to 
judgment, whether the last of all or not it were vain to 
ask ; how blessed would it be, if we could see such an ark 
of Christ's Church as should float visibly upon the stormy 
waters ; gathering within it, in peace and safety, men of 
various dispositions and conditions, and opinions ; those 
who held much of truth, and those who had mixed with it 
much of error : those whom Christ would call clean, and 
those, too, whom some of their brethren call unclean, but 
whom Christ has redeemed, and will save no less than 
their despisers ; all, in short, who fled from sin and from 
the world to Christ, and to the company of Christ's 
people ! if we could but see such an ark preparing 
Avhile God's long-suff'ering yet withholds the flood ! 
that all God's scattered and divided children would join 
together in one earnest prayer, Lord, build thou the 
walls of Jerusalem ! Lord, build ! Lord, build ! 
Lord, build ! 

Yet, for this, among other purposes of mercy, did the 
Son of God, as on this day, sufi'er death upon the cross : 
he died that we might be one in him. Let us turn, then, 
from the thought of the general temple in ruins, and let 
us see whether we cannot, at any rate, within the walls of 
our own little particular congregation, fulfil also this object 
of Christ's death, and be one in him. Let us consider one 
another, to provoke unto love and to good works : we too 
often consider one another for the very contrary purpose, 
to provoke to contempt or ill-will. True it is, that if we 
look for it we can find much of evil in our brethren, and 
they can find much also in us ; and we might become all 
haters of one another, all in some sort deserving to be 
hated. But where is he who is entitled to hate another's 
evil when he has evil in himself ; and when Christ, who 



lIOVv^ WE MAY UrirjILD IT. 



249 



had none, did not hate the evil of us all, but rather died 
to save it ? And is it not true also, that, if we look for it, 
we can also find in every one something to love ? some- 
thinir, undoubtedly, even in him who has in himself least : 
but much, infinitely much in all, when we look upon them 
as Christ's redeemed. Not more beautifully than truly 
has it been said, that christian souls — 

" Though worn and soiled by sinful clay, 
Are yet, to eyes that see them true, 
All glistening with baptismal dew/' 

They have the seal of belonging to Christ ; they are his 
and our brethren. And, as his latest command, and his 
beloved Apostle's also, was that we should love one another ; 
so, if we would bring all our solemn thoughts of Christ's 
death to one point, and endeavour to derive from it some 
one particular lesson for our daily lives, I know not that 
any would be more needed or better for us, than that we 
should especially apply the thought of Christ dying on the 
cross for us to soften our angry, and proud, and selfish 
feelings ; to restrain us from angry or sneering words ; 
from unkind, ofiensive, rude, or insulting actions ; to excite 
us to gentleness, courtesy, kindness ; remembering that he, 
be he who he may, whom we allow ourselves to despise, or 
to dislike, or to annoy, or to neglect, was one so precious 
in Christ's sight, that he laid down his life for his sake, 
and invites him to be for ever with him and with his 
Father. 



LECTURE XXY. 



EASTER DAY. 



John xx. 20. 

Then tlie disciples icent away again unto their oxen home. 

"With tlils verse ends the portion of the scripture chosen 
for the gospel in this morning's service. It finishes the 
account of the visit of Peter and John to the sepulchre ; 
and, therefore, the close of the extract at this point is 
sufficiently natural. Yet the effect of the quiet tone of 
these ^ords, just following the account of the greatest 
event which earth has ever witnessed, is, I think, singu- 
larly impressive ; the more so when we remember that 
they were written by one of the very persons, whose visit 
had been just described ; and that the writer, therefore, 
could tell full well, to how intense an interest there had 
succeeded that solemn calm. They went away from the 
very sight, if I may so speak, of Christ risen, to their own 
homes. And what thoughts do we suppose that they car- 
ried with them ? Let us endeavour to recall them, for 
our benefit, also, who, like them, are going, as it were, to 
the ordinary tenure of our daily lives from this day's high 
solemnity. 

The disciples went away to their own homes ; and there 
they waited, either in Jerusalem or in Galilee, pursuing, as 
we find from the last chapter of St. John, their common 

(250) 



THE DISCIPLES GOING TO THEIR HOME. 251 

occupations, till, after their Lord's ascension, power yras 
given them from on high, and the great work of their 
apostleship began. During this period, Christ appeared 
to them several times : he conversed with them, he ate 
and drank with them : but he did not live continually 
■with them, as he had done before his crucifixion : he did 
not take them about with him as before, while he was per- 
forming the part of the great prophet of the house of 
Israel. They were now at their own homes waiting for 
his call to more active duties. They had seen him dead, 
and they had seen him risen, and they were recei™g into 
their souls all the lessons of his life and death and resur- 
rection, brought before them, and impressed upon them 
by that Holy Spirit, who, according to Christ's promise, 
was to take of the things which are Christ's, and to show 
them to Chi'ist's disciples. 

It is true that there came upon them, after this, an 
especial visitation of the Spirit of power, to fit them for 
their particular work of apostles or messengers to man- 
kind. Having been converted themselves, they were to 
strengthen their brethren. And as this especial visitation 
of the Holy Spirit was given to them only, and to those 
on whom they themselves laid their hands, so none have 
ever since been called to that particular work to which 
they were called, in any thing of the same degree of ful- 
ness. "What is peculiar to them as apostles is not appli- 
cable exactly to us ; but we are all concerned in what 
belongs to them as Chi*istians : in this respect, their case 
is ours ; and they, when at their own homes, and engaged 
in their own callings, stand in the same situation as we all. 

We may, however, still make a two-fold division ; we 
may regard the apostles going away to their own homes, 
as a temporary thing, as a mere term of preparation for 
the duties which they were afterwards called to ; or we 



252 cnra^^T is not in the sepulchre. 

may look upon it as complete so far as earth is concerned, 
since, taking them as Cliristians only and not as apostles, 
they might have so lived on to the end of their lives, 
having received all those helps which were needed for 
their own personal salvation, and having only to use them 
daily for their soul's benefit. This same distinction we 
may apply to ourselves. We may consider ourselves as 
going to our own homes for a time only, awaiting our call 
to active life ; or we may consider ourselves as withdraw- 
ing, after every celebration of Christ's resurrection, to 
that round of daily duties which on earth shall never 
alter ; and to which all the helps derived from our com- 
munion with Christ are to be applied, with nothing future, 
so far as earth is concerned, for vrhich we may need them. 
So then, of whatever age we may be, what is said of the 
apostles in the text may apply to us also: after having 
witnessed, as it were, Christ's resurrection, we go away to 
our own homes. Let us first take that part of the text 
which is common to us all, though not in the same degree 
— the having been witnesses of Christ's resurrection. 
John and Peter found him not in the sepulchre ; they 
found the linen clothes and the napkin lying there, but he 
was gone. And upon this, as John assures us, both for 
himself and his companion, "they believed." They be- 
lieved, we should observe, when as yet they had no more 
seen Jesus himself after his resurrection, than we have 
now. They only knew that he had been dead, and that 
he was not in the sepulchre. And this we know also ; we 
have not seen him, indeed, since his resurrection : but we 
are sure he is not in the sepulchre. We are sure that the 
malice of his enemies did not do its work : we are sure, 
for we are ourselves witnesses of it, that that name, and 
that word, which they hoped would have been destroyed 
for ever, like the names of many, not only of false pro- 



THIS WE OURSELVES WITNESS. 253 

pliets and deceivers, but even of good men and of wise, 
have not perished, but have brought forth fruit more 
abundantly, from the very cause that was intended to put 
them out. Christ's gospel, assuredly, is a living thing, 
full of vigour and full of power ; it has worked mightily 
for good, and is working ; it is so full of blessing, it tends 
so largely towards the happiness that is enjoyed upon 
earth, that we are quite sure it is not lying still buried in 
Christ's sepulchre. 

They (the two disciples) then went away believing, 
because they found that he was not in the sepulchre. But 
Mary Magdalene came and told them, that she had seen 
him risen, and had heard his voice with her ears. What 
she told Peter and John, Peter and John are now telling 
to us. They tell us that they have heard him, have seen 
him with their eyes, have looked upon him, yea, that their 
hands have handled him. They tell us even more than 
Mary Magdalene told them ; for she had not been allowed 
to touch him. AYe may well trust their testimony, as they 
trusted hers, being quite ready indeed to believe that he 
was alive, because they had found that he was not amongst 
the dead. And so we, finding that he is not amongst the 
dead, seeing and knowing the fruits of his gospel, the 
living and ever increasing fruits of it, may well believe 
that its author is risen, and that the pains of death were 
loosed from off him, because it was not possible that he 
should be holden by them. 

In this way, we, like the two disciples, may be all 
said to be witnesses of Christ's resurrection. May it not 
be said still more of those amongst us who assembled this 
morning round Christ's table, to keep alive the memory 
of his death ; when we partook of that bread, and drank 
of that cup, of which so many thousands and millions, in 
every age and in every land, have eaten and drunken, all 
22 



254 WATCHING AND PRATING INVITE HIM. 

receiving them with nearly the same words, — the body that 
was given for us, the blood that was shed for us, — all, 
making allowances for human weakness, finding in that 
communion the peace and the strength of God ; all alike 
receiving it with penitent hearts, and with faith, and pur- 
poses of good for the time to come ? Did we not then 
w^itness that Christ is not perished ? that he has been ever, 
and still is, mighty to save ? That command given to 
twelve persons, in an obscure chamber in Jerusalem, by 
one who, the next day, was to die as a malefactor, has 
been, and is obeyed from one end of the world to another ; 
and wherever it has been obeyed, there, in proportion to 
the sincerity of the obedience, has been the fulness of the 
blessing. 

But this is now past, as with the two disciples, and we 
are going again to our own homes. There, neither the 
empty sepulchre nor the risen Saviour are present before 
us, but common scenes and familiar occupations, which in 
themselves have nothing in them of Christ. So it must 
be ; we cannot be always within these walls ; we cannot 
always be engaged m public prayer ; we cannot always be 
hearing Christ's word, nor partaking of his communion; 
we must be going about our several works, and must be 
busied in them ; some of us in preparation for other work 
to come, others to go on till the end of their lives with this 
only. May we not hope that Christ, and Christ's Spirit, 
will visit us the while in these our daily callings, as he 
came to his disciples Peter and John, when following their 
business as fishers on the lake of Gennesareth ? 

How can we get him to visit us ? There is one answer 
— by prayer and by watchfulness. By prayer, whether we 
are in our preparatory state, or our fixed one ; by prayer, 
and I think I may add, by praying in our own words. Of 
course, when we pray together, some of us must join in the 



PRAYER MUST BE REAL, NOT FORMAL. 255 

words of others ; and it makes little difference, whether 
those words be spoken or read. But when we pray alone, 
some, perhaps, may still use none but prayers made by 
others, especially the Lord's prayer. We should remem- 
ber, however, that the Lord's prayer was given for this 
very purpose, to teach us how to pray for ourselves. But 
it does not do this, if we use it alone, and still more, if we 
use it without understanding it. If we do understand it, 
and study it, it will indeed teach us to pray ; it will show 
us what we most need in prayer, and what are our greatest 
evils ; but surely it may be said, that no man ever learnt 
this lesson well without wishing to practise it ; no man 
ever used the Lord's prayer with understanding and with 
earnestness, without adding to it others of his own. And 
this is not a trifling matter. We know the difficulty of 
attending in prayer ; and if we use the words of others 
only, which we must, therefore, repeat from memory, it is 
perfectly possible to say them over without really joining 
with them in our minds : we may say them over to our- 
selves, and be actually thinking of other things the while. 
And the same thing holds good, of course, even with pray- 
ers that we have made ourselves, if we accustom ourselves 
to repeat them without alteration ; they then become, in 
fact, the work of another than our actual mind, and may 
be repeated by memory alone. Therefore, it seems to be 
of consequence to vary the words, and even the matter of 
our private prayers, that so we may not deceive ourselves, 
by repeating merely, when we fancy that we are praying. 
Ten words actually made by ourselves at the moment, and 
not remembered, are a real prayer ; for it is not hypocrisy 
that is the most common danger ; our temper, when we 
are on our knees, is apt indeed to be careless, but not, I 
hope and believe, deceitful. This, of course, must be 
well known to a very large proportion of us ; but, perhaps, 



256 AND THIS "^ILL MAKE US WATCH. 

there are some to whom it may be useful ; some to whom 
the advice may not yet have suggested itself, that they 
should make their own prayers, in part, at least, w^henever 
they kneel down to their private devotions. 

And this sort of prayer, with God's blessing, is likely 
to make us watchful. We rise in the morning : we say 
some prayers of our own ; we hear others read to us ; and 
yet it is possible that we may not have really prayed 
ourselves in either case ; we may not have brought our- 
selves truly into the presence of God. Hence our true 
condition, with all its dangers, has not been brought before 
our minds ; the need of watchfulness has not been shown 
to us. But with real prayer of our own hearts' making 
it is different ; God is then present to us, and sin and 
righteousness : our dream of carelessness is, for a moment 
at least, broken. No doubt it is but too easy to dream 
again ; yet still an opportunity of exerting ourselves to 
keep awake is given us ; we are roused to consciousness 
of our situation ; and that, at any rate, renders exertion 
possible. There is no doubt that souls are most commonly 
lost by this continued dreaming, till at length, when seem- 
ingly aAvake (they are not so really), they are like men 
who answer to the call that would arouse them, but they 
answer, in fact, unconsciously. We cannot tell for our- 
selves or others any way by which our souls shall cer- 
tainly be saved, in spite of carelessness ; or any way by 
which carelessness shall be overcome necessarily ; all that 
can be done is, to point out how it may be overcome, by 
■what means the soul may be helped in its endeavours ; not 
how those endeavours and holy desires may be rendered 
needless. 

Thus, then, we may gain Christ to visit us at our own 
homes and in our common callings, when we are returned 
to them. And that difference which I spoke of as existing 



CONCLUSION. 25T 

between us, that some of us are waiting for Christ's call 
to a higher field of action, while others are engaged in 
that sort of duty which will last their lives, I know not 
that this — though it be often important, and though I am 
often obliged to dwell on it — need enter into our consider- 
ations to-day. Rather, perhaps, may we overlook this 
difference, and feel that all of us here assembled — those in 
their state of earliest preparation for after duties ; those 
to whom that earliest state is passed away, and who are 
entered into another state, in part preparatory, in part 
partaking of the character of actual life ; and those also 
whose preparation, speaking of earth only, is completed 
altogether, who must be doing, and whose time even of 
doing is far advanced — that all of us have in truth one 
great call yet before us : and that, with respect to that, we 
are all, as it were, preparing still. And for that great 
call, common to all of us, we need all the same common 
readiness ; and that readiness will be effected in us only 
by the same means, — if now, before it come, Christ and 
Christ's Spirit shall, in our homes and daily callings, be 
persuaded to visit us. 



22* 



LECTURE XXVI 



WHITSUNDAY. 



Acts xix. 2. 
Have you received the Holy Ghost since ye believed ? 

It appears, by what follows these words, that the 
question here related especially to those gifts of the Holy 
Ghost which were given, in the first age of the church, as 
a sign of God's power, and a witness that the work of the 
gospel was from God. Yet although this be so, and 
therefore the words, in this particular sense, cannot to 
any good purpose be asked now; yet there is another 
sense, and that not a lower but a far higher one, in which 
we may ask them, and in which it concerns us in the 
highest degree, what sort of answer we can give to them, 
I say, " what sort of answer ;" for I think it is true of 
all Christians that, in a certain measure, they have 
received the Holy Ghost. Not only does the doctrine of 
our own, and I believe every other, church, concerning 
baptism, show this : but it seems also necessarily to follow, 
from those words of St. Paul, that "No man can say that 
Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost." And yet the 
Scripture and common experience alike show us, that a 
man may call Jesus Lord, and yet not be really his, nor 
one who will be owned by Him at the last day. So that 
what is of real importance to us is, the degree of fulness 

(258) 



THE HOLY GHOST RECEIVED, 259 

and force with winch we couki give the answer to the 
words of the text ; not simply saying that we have 
received the Holy Ghost, which would be true, hut might 
be far from sufficient ; but saying that we have received 
Him and are receiving Him more and more, so that our 
hearts and lives are showing the impression of his heavenly 
seal daily more and more clearly and completely. 

And this must really have always been the answer 
which it concerned every Christian to be able to make ; 
although it has been in various instances, and by very 
opposite parties, tried to be evaded. It is evaded alike by 
those who set too highly the grace given in baptism, and 
by those who, setting this too low, direct our attention to 
another point in a man's life, which they call his justifica- 
tion or conversion. For both alike would give an ex- 
aggerated importance to one particular moment of our 
lives, and to the grace then given. Now, the importance 
of particular moments in men's lives diflers exceedingly in 
different persons ; but yet in all may be exaggerated. I 
suppose that if ever in any man's life a particular point 
was of immense importance, it was the point of his conver- 
sion in the case of St. Paul. There were here united all 
that grace which according to one view accompanies bap- 
tism especially, and all which according to the other view 
accompanies conversion and justification. Here was a 
point which separated St. Paul's later life from his earlier 
with a broader line of separation than can possibly be the 
case in general. There can be no doubt that he, if ever 
man did, received at that particular time the Holy Ghost. 
But if, ten or twenty years afterwards, St. Paul had been 
asked concerning what the Holy Ghost had done for him, 
he would not certainly have confined himself in his answer 
to the grace once given him at his conversion and baptism, 
but would have spoken of that which he had been receiving 



260 EXAMPLE OF ST. PAUL. 

since every hour and every day, carrying forward and 
completing that work of God which had been begun at the 
time of his journey to Damascus. And as he had 
received more and more grace, so was his confidence in 
his acceptance with God at the last day more and more 
assured. For he writes to the Corinthians, many years 
after his conversion and baptism, that he kept under his 
body, and was bringing it into subjection, lest that by 
any means, after having preached to others, he should be 
himself a castaway. And some years later still, though 
he does not use so strong an expression as that of becom- 
ing a castaway, yet he still says, even when writing to 
the Philippians from Rome, that he counted not himself 
to have apprehended, nor to have attained his object 
fully ; but forgetting what was behind, even the grace of 
his conversion and baptism, he pressed on to the things 
which were before, even that continued and increasing 
grace which was required to bring him in safety to his 
heavenly crown. But if we go on some years yet farther, 
when his labours were ended, and the sure prospect of 
speedy death was before him ; when the past grace was 
everything, and what he could expect yet to come was 
scarcely any other than that particular aid which we need 
in our struggle with the last enemy — death ; then, his 
language is free from all uncertainty; then, in the full 
sense of the words, he could say that he had received the 
Holy Ghost, that his spirit had been fully born again for 
its eternal being, and that there only remained the raising 
up also of his mortal body, to complete that new creation 
of body and soul which Christ's Spirit works in Christ's 
redeemed. " I have fought the good fight, I have finished 
my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is 
laid up for me my crown of righteousness, which the Lord,t 
the righteous judge, will give me at that day." 



261 

It seems, tlien, tliat the great question Tvhicli we should 
be anxious to be able to answer in the aiSrmative, is this, 
^^Are we receiving the Holy Ghost since we believed?' 
" Since we believed," whether we choose to carry back the 
date of our first belief to the very time of our baptism, 
when grace was given to us, — we know not to what degree 
nor how, — yet given to us, as being then received into 
Christ's flock ; or whether we go back only to that time 
when we can ourselves remember ourselves to have 
believed, and so can remember that God's grace was 
given to us. Have we been ever since, and are we still, 
receivincr the Holy Ghost ? blessed above all blessed- 
ness, if we can say that this is true of us ! blessed 
with a blessedness most complete, if we only do not too 
entirely abandon ourselves to enjoy it I Elect of God ; 
holy- and beloved ; justified and sanctified ; there is no- 
thing in all the world that could impair or destroy such 
happiness, except we ourselves, in evil hour, believed it to 
be out of the reach of danger. 

But if the witness of memory and conscience be less 
favourable ; if we can remember long seasons of our lives 
during which w^ were not receiving the Holy Ghost; long 
seasons of a cold and hard state, in which there was, as it 
were, neither rain nor dew, nor yet sun to ripen what had 
grown before ; but all was so ungenial that no new thing 
grew ; and what had grown was withering and almost 
dying ; what shall be said, then, and how can the time be 
made up which was so wasted ? But we remember, it 
may be, that this deadly season passed away : the rain 
fell once more, and the tender dew, and the quickening 
sun shone brightly : our spiritual growth began again, 
and is now going on healthily ; we have not always been 
receiving the Holy Ghost since we believed, but we are 



262 DID WE ONCE RECEIVE IIIM ? 

receiving Mm now. How gracious, then, has God been 
to us, that he has again renewed us unto repentance ; that 
he has shown that we have not, in the fullest sense, sin- 
ned against the Holy Ghost, seeing that the Holy Ghost 
still abides with us ! we grieved him, and tried his long- 
suffering, but he has not abandoned us to our own evil 
hearts ; we are receiving him who is the giver of life, and 
we still live. 

But must not we speak of others? is not another case to 
be supposed possible ? may there not be some who cannot 
say with truth that they are receiving the holy Ghost 
now ? They received him once ; we doubt it not ; perhaps 
they were receiving him for some length of time ; their 
early childhood was watched by Christian care ; their 
youth and early manhood, when it received freshly things 
of this world, received also, with lively thankfulnesSj the 
grace of God ; they can remember a time when they were 
growing in goodness ; when they were being renewed after 
the image of God. But they can remember, also, that 
this time passed away ; the grace of early childhood was 
put out by the temptations of boyhood ; the grace of youth 
and opening manhood died away amid the hardness of this 
life's maturity. It is so, I believe, often ; that boyhood, 
which is, as it were, ripened childhood, destroys the grace 
of our earliest years ; that again, when youth offers us a 
second beginning of life, we are again impressed with 
good ; but that ripened youth, which is manhood, brings 
with it again the season of hardness, and again our spirit- 
ual growth is destroyed. We can remember, I am sup- 
posing, that this fatal change did take place ; but can we 
date it to any particular act, or month, or day, or hour ? 
We can do so most rarely : in this respect the seed of death 
can even less be traced to its beginning than the seed of 



ONE OF THESE CASES MUST BE OURS. 263 

life. And yet there loas a beginning, only we do not 
remember it. And why do we not remember it ? Because 
the real beginning Avas in some act which seemed of so 
little consequence that it made no impression ; in the 
altering some habit Avhich we judged to be a mere trifle ; 
in the indulging some temper which even at the time we 
hardly noticed. Some such little thing, — little in our 
view of it, — made the fatal turn ; we received the grace 
of God less and less : we heeded not the change for a 
season ; and when it was so marked that we could not but 
heed it, then we had ceased to regard it ; and so it was 
that the spring of our life was dried up : and it is of no 
more avail to our present and future state, that we once 
received grace, than the rain of last winter will be suffi- 
cient to ripen the summer's harvest, if from this time 
forward we have nothing but drought and cold. 

Some few, again, there may be, who, within their own 
recollection, could not say that they have received the 
Holy Ghost : persons who have lived among careless 
friends, to whom the way of life has never been steadily 
pointed ont ; while the way of death, with all its manifold 
paths, meeting at last in one, has been continually before 
them. Shall we say that these, because they have been 
baptized, are therefore guilty of having rejected grace 
given ? that this sin is aggravated, because a mercy was 
offered them once of which they were unconscious ? We 
would not say this ; but we would say that it is impossible 
but that they must have received the Holy Ghost within 
their memory ; it is impossible but that conscience must 
have sometimes spoken, and that they must have sometimes 
been enabled to obey it ; it is impossible but that they 
must have had some notions of sin, and some desires to 
struggle against it; and so far as they ever felt that 



264 ONE OF THESE CASES MUST BE OrRS. 

desire, it was the work of God's Holy Spirit. Man cannot 
dare to say how great the amount of their guilt may be ; 
but guilt there certainly is ; they have grieved the Holy 
Spirit ; and, though we dare not say that they have utterly 
blasphemed him, yet they have a long hardness to over- 
come, and every hour of delayed turning to God increases 
it : it may be possible still to overcome it, but meanwhile 
it is not overcome ; they are not receiving the Holy Spirit ; 
they are not being renewed into the likeness of Christ, 
without which no man can see God. 

Here, then, are the four cases, one of which must belong 
to every one of us here assembled. Either we have been 
always and still are receiving the Holy Ghost ; or we can 
remember when we were not, but yet are receiving him 
now ; or we can remember when we were, but yet now are 
not; or we cannot remember to have received him ever, 
nor are we yet receiving him. I cannot say which of the 
last two states is the most dreadful, nor scarcely which of 
the first two states is the most blessed. But yet as even 
those happy states admit not of over-confidence, so neither 
do the last two most unhappy states oblige us to despair. 
Not to despair ; but they do urge us to every degree of 
fear less than despair. There is far more danger of our 
not fearing enough than of our being di'iven to despair. 
There is far more danger of your looking on the season of 
youth, of our looking on to old age ; you trusting to the 
second freshness and tenderness of the first, — we to the 
calmness and necessai-y reflection of the last. There is 
far more danger of our thus hardening ourselves beyond 
recall ; there is not only the danger, but there is the sin, 
the greatest sin, I suppose, of which the human mind is 
capable, that of deliberately choosing evil for the present 
rather than good, calculating that, by and by, we shall 
choose good rather than evil. I believe, that it is impos- 



WE SHOULD SEE WHICH IT IS. 265 

siblc to conceive of any state of mind more sinful than one 
which should so feel and so choose ; and this is the state 
which we incur, and which we persist in whenever we put 
off the thought of repentance. Now, then, it only remains, 
that we apply this each to ourselves ; I say all of us apply 
it, the young and the old alike ; for there is not one here 
so young as not to have cause to apply it ; there is not one 
of us who would not, I am sure, be a different person from 
what he now is, if he were to ask himself steadily every 
day, Have I been and am I receiving the Holy Ghost 
since I believed ? 



23 



LECTUEE XXYII. 



TRINITY SUNDAY. 



John iii. 9. 

Hoio can these tilings be ? 

This is tlie second question put by Nicodemus to our 
Lord with regard to the truths which Jesus was declaring 
to him. The first was, '' How can a man be born when 
he is old ?" which was said upon our Lord's telling him 
that, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the 
kingdom of God." Now, it will be observed, that these 
two questions arc treated by our Lord in a different 
manner : to the first he, in fact, gives an answer ; that is, 
he removes by his answer that difficulty in Nicodemus*s 
mind which led to the question ; but to the second he 
gives no answer, and leaves Nicodemus — and with Nicode- 
mus, us all also — exactly in the same ignorance as he 
found him at the beginning. 

Now, is there any difference in the nature of these two 
questions, which led our Lord to treat them so differently ? 
We might suppose beforehand that there would be ; and 
when we come to examine them, so we shall find it. The 
difficulty in the first question rendered true faith impos- 
sible, and, therefore, our Lord removed it; the difficulty 
in the second question did not properly interfere with faith 
at all, but might, through man's fault, be a temptation to 

(266) 



NO BELIEF WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING. 267 

him to refuse to believe. And as this, like other tempta- 
tions, must be overcome by us, and not ta.ken away from 
our path before we encounter it, so oui' Lord did not think 
proper to remove it or to lessen it. 

We must now unfold this difference more clearly. 
"When Christ said, " Except a man be born again, he can- 
not see the kingdom of God," Nicodemus could not 
possibly believe what our Lord said, because he did not 
understand his meaning. He did not know what he 
meant by '' a man's being born again," and, therefore, he 
could not believe, as he did not know what he was to 
believe. Words which we do not understand, are like 
words spoken in an unknown language ; we can neither 
believe them nor disbelieve them, because we do not know 
what they say. For instance, I repeat these words, Toug 
iravTac: Tjfxas ^avspwdvjvai SsT I'fXTpoO'tJsv tov ^r,^iarog ^ou Xpioroy. 
Now, if I were to ask, Do you believe these words ? is it 
not manifest that all of you who know Greek enough to 
understand them may also believe them ; but of those who 
do not know Greek, not a single person can yet believe 
them ? They are as yet words spoken as to the air. But 
when I add, that these words mean, "We must all stand 
before the judgment-seat of Christ;" now we can all 
believe them because we can all understand them. 

It is, then, perfectly impossible for any man to believe 
a statement except in proportion as he understands its 
meaning. And, therefore, our Lord explained what he 
meant to Nicodemus, and told him that, by being born 
again, he did not mean the natural birth of the body; 
but a birth caused by the Spirit, and therefore itself a 
birth of a spirit : for, as that which is born from a body 
is itself also a body, so that which is born of a spirit is 
itself also a spirit. So that Christ's words now are seen 
to have this meaning, — ^No man can enter into the kingdom 



268 WE NEED NOT KNOW HOW IT HAPPENS. 

of God except God's Spirit creates in him a spirit or mind 
like unto himself, and like unto Christ, and like unto the 
Father. Nicodemus, then, could now understand what 
was meant, and might have believed it. But he asks 
rather another question, " How can these things be ?" 
How can God's Spirit create within me a spirit like him- 
self, while I continue a man as before ? Many persons 
since have asked similar questions ; but to none of them is 
an answer given. How God's Spirit works within us I 
cannot tell ; but if we take the appointed means of pro- 
curing his aid, we shall surely find that he has worked and 
does work in us to life eternal. 

We must, then, in order to believe, understand what it 
is that is told us; but it is by no means necessary that we 
should understand how it is to happen. It is not neces- 
sary, and in a thousand instances we do not know. " If 
we take poison, we shall die :" there is a statement which 
we can understand, and therefore believe. But do we 
understand how it is that poison kills us ? Does every 
one here know how poisons act upon the human frame, 
and what is the different operation of different poisons, — 
how laudanum kills, for instance, and how arsenic ? 
Surely there are very few of us, at most, who do under- 
stand this : and yet would it not be exceedingly unreason- 
able to refuse to believe that poison will kill us, because 
we do not understand the manner how ? 

Thus far, I think, the question is perfectly plain, so 
soon as it is once laid before us. But the real point of 
perplexity is to be found a step further. In almost all 
propositions there is something about the terms which we 
do understand, and something which we do not. For 
instance, let me say these few words: — *'A frigate was 
lost amidst the breakers." These words would be under- 
stood in a certain degree, by all who hear me : and so far 



WE MUST KNOW ITS PURPORT TO US, 269 

as all understand them, all can believe them. All would 
understand that a ship had sunk in the water, or been 
dashed to pieces ; that it would be useful no more for the 
purposes for which it had been made. But what is meant 
by the words "frigate" and "breakers" all would not un- 
derstand, and many would understand very differently: 
that is to say, those who had happened to have known 
most about the sea and sea affairs would understand most 
about them, while those who knew less would understand 
less; but probably none of us would understand their 
meaning so fully, or would have so distinct and lively an 
image of the things, as would be enjoyed by an actual 
seaman ; and even amongst seamen themselves, there 
would again be different degrees of understanding, ac- 
cording to their different degrees of experience, or know- 
ledge of ships, or powers of mind. 

I have taken the instance at random, and any other pro- 
position might have served my purpose as well. But men 
do not speak to one another at random ; when they say 
anything to their neighbour, they mean it to produce on 
his mind a certain effect. Suppose that we were living 
near the sea-coast, and any one were suddenly to come in, 
and to utter the words which I have taken as my example : 
should we not know that what the man meant by these 
words was, that there was a danger at hand for which our 
help was needed ? It matters not that we have no distinct 
ideas of the terms " frigate" or " breakers ;" vre understand 
enough for our belief and practice, and we should hasten 
to the sea-shore accordingly. Or suppose that the same 
words were told us of a frigate in which we had some near 
relation : should we not see at once that what we were 
meant to understand and to believe in the words was, that 
we had lost a relation ? That is the truth with which we 
are concerned; and this we can understand and feel, 
23^ 



270 BUT NOT EVERY THING ABOUT IT. 

althougli we may be able to understand nothing more of 
the words in which that truth is conveyed to us. Now, 
in like manner, in whatever God says to us there is a pur- 
pose : it is intended to produce on our minds a certain im- 
pression, and so far it must be understood. But when 
God speaks to us of heavenly things, the terms employed 
can only be understood in part, and so far as God's pur- 
pose with regard to our minds reaches ; but there must be 
a great deal in them which we can no more understand 
than one who had never seen a ship, or a picture of one, 
could understand the word "frigate." Our business is to 
consider what impression or what actions the words are 
intended to produce in us. Up to this point we can and 
must understand them : beyond this they may be wholly 
above the reach of our faculties, and we can form of them 
no ideas at all. 

It is clear that this will be the case most especially 
whenever God reveals to us anything concerning himself. 
Take these few words, for example, "God is a spirit;'* 
take them as a mere abstract truth, and how little can we 
understand about them ! Who will dare to say that he un- 
derstands all that is contained in the words " God " and 
" spirit ?" "We might weary ourselves for ever in attempt- 
ing so to search out either. But God said these words to 
us : and the point is, What impression did he mean them 
to have upon us ? how far can we understand them ? This 
he has not by any means left doubtful, for it follows im- 
mediately, "They who worship him should worship 
him in spirit and in truth." Por this end the words 
w^ere spoken, and thus far they are clear to us. God 
lives not on Mount Gerizim or at Jerusalem : but in 
every place he hears the prayers of the sincere and con- 
trite heart, in no place will he regard the offerings of the 
proud and evil. 



OF THE SON, 271 

Or again, " God so loved the world that he gave his 
only-begotten Son, to the end that all who believe in him 
should not perish, but have eternal life." Here are words 
in themselves, as abstract truths, perfectly overwhelming ; 
"God," "God's only-begotten Son," "Eternity." Who 
shall understand these things, when it is said, that " none 
knoweth the Son, save the Father ; that none knoweth the 
Father, save the Son ?" But did God tell us the words 
for nothing? can we understand nothing from them? 
believe nothing ? feel nothing ? Nay, they were spoken 
that we might both understand, and believe, and feel. 
How must He love us, who gives for us his only-begotten 
Son ! how surely may we believe - in Him who is an only- 
begotten Son to his Father, — so equal in nature, so entire 
in union ! — What must that happiness be, which reaches 
beyond our powers of counting ! Would we go further ? 
— then the veil is drawn before us ; other truths there are, 
no doubt, contained in the words ; truths which the angels 
might desire to look into ; truths which even they may be 
unable to understand. But these are the secret things^ 
which belong unto our God ; the things which are revealed 
they are what belong to us and to our children, that we 
may understand, and believe, and do them. 

Again, " the Comforter, whom Christ will send unto us 
from the Father, even the Spirit of Truth, which proceed- 
eth from the Father, he shall testify of Christ." "What 
words are here! "The Spirit of Truth," "the Spirit 
proceeding from the Father;" the Spirit "whom Christ 
will send," and "send from the Father." Can any 
created being understand, to the full, such " heavenly 
things " as these ? But would Christ have uttered to his 
disciples mere unintelligible words, which could tell them 
nothing, and excite in them no feeling but mere wonder ? 
Not so ; but the words told them that Chi'ist was not to be 



272 OF THE TIOLY GHOST. 

lost to them after be had left them on earth ; that every 
gift of God Tvas his : that even that Spirit of God, in 
which is contained all the fulness of the Godhead, is the 
Spirit of Christ also ; that that mighty power Avhich should 
work in them so abundantly, was of no other or lower 
origin than God himself; as entirely God, as the spirit of 
man is man. But can we therefore understand the Spirit of 
God, or conceive of him ? IIow should we, when we can- 
not understand our own ? This, and this only, we under-^ 
stand and believe, that without him our spirits cannot be 
quickened ; that unless we pray daily for his aid, and 
listen to his calls within us, our spirit will never be created 
after his image,' and we cannot enter into the kingdom of 
God. 

It is thus, and thus only, that the revelations of God's 
word are beyond our understandings : that in them, beings 
and things are spoken of, which, taken generally, and in 
themselves, we should in vain endeavour to comprehend. 
But what God means us to know, or feel, or do, respecting 
them, that we can understand ; and beyond this we have 
no concern. It is, in fact, a contradiction to speak of 
revealing what is unintelligible ; for so far as it is a 
revealed truth it is intelligible ; so far as it is unintelli- 
gible, it is not revealed. But though a thing revealed 
must be intelligible in itself, yet it by no means follows 
that we can understand how it happens. When we are 
told that the dead shall rise again, we can understand 
quite well what is meant ; that we beings who feel happiness 
and misery, shall feel them again, either the one or the 
other, after we seemingly have done with them for ever 
in the grave. But " How are the dead raised up, and 
with what body do they come ?" are questions to which, 
whether asked scoffingly or sincerely, we can give no. 
answers ; here our understanding fails, and here the truth 
is not rvsvealed to us. 



CHRISTIAN MYSTERIES. 273 

How, then, has Christianity no mysteries ? In one 
sense, blessed be God for it, it has many. Using mys- 
teries in St. Paul's sense of great revelations of things 
which were and must be unknown to all, except God had 
revealed them : then, indeed, they are many ; the pillar 
and ground of truth, great without controversy, and full 
of salvation. But take mysteries in our more common 
sense of the word, — as things which are revealed to none, 
and can be understood by none, — then it is true that 
Christianity leaves many such in existence ; that many 
such she has done away ; that none has she created. She 
leaves many mysteries with respect to God, and with re- 
spect to ourselves ; God is still incomprehensible ; life and 
death have many things in them beyond our questioning; 
we may still look around us, above, us, and within us, and 
wonder, and be ignorant. But if she still leaves the veil 
drawn over much in heaven and in earth, yet from how 
much has she removed it ! Life and death are still 
in many respects dark ; but she has brought to light im- 
mortality. God is still in himself incomprehensible ; but 
all his glory, and all his perfections, are revealed to us in 
his only-begotten Son Christ Jesus. God's Spirit who 
can search out in his own proper essence ? yet Christianity 
has taught us how we may have him to dwell with us for 
ever, and taste the fulness of his blessings. Yea, thanks 
be to God for the great Christian mystery which we this 
day celebrate ; that he has revealed himself to us as our 
Saviour and our Comforter ; that he has revealed to us 
his infinite love, in that he has given us his only-begotten 
Son to die for us, and his own Eternal Spirit to make our 
•hearts his temple. 



LECTURE XXYIII 



Exodus iii. 6. 
And Moses hid liis face^ for lie loas afraid to look upon God. 

Luke xxiii. 30. 

Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us ; and to the 
hills, Cover us. 

These two passages occur, the one in the first lesson 
of this morning's service, the other in the second. One 
or other of them must have been, or must be, the case of 
you, of me, of every soul of man that lives or has lived 
since the world began. There must be a time in the ex- 
istence of every human being when he will fear God. But 
the great, the infinite difierence is, whether we fear him at 
the beginning of our relations to him, or at the end. 

The fear of Moses was felt at the beginning of his 
knowledge of God. When God revealed himself to him 
at the bush, it was, so far as we are told, the first time 
that Moses learnt to know him. The fear of those who 
say to the mountains, ''Fall on us," is felt at the very 
end of their knowledge of God ; for to those who are 
punished with everlasting destruction from the presence 
of the Lord, God is not. So that the two cases in the 
text are exact instances of the difference of which I 
spoke, in the most extreme degree. Moses, the greatest 

(274) 



WE CAN AVOID FEARING HIM NOW, 275 

of the prophets, fears God at first; those who are cast 
into hell, fear him at last. 

The appearance of God, as described in this passage of 
Scripture, is an image also of his dealings with us at the 
beginning of our course, when we fear him with a saving 
fear. " The bush burned with fire, but the bush was not 
consumed." God shows his terrors, but he does not, as 
yet, destroy with them. It is the very opposite to this 
at last, for then he is expressly said to be a consuming 
fire. 

Moses turned aside to see this great sight, why the bush 
was not burnt. That sight is the very same which the 
world has been offering for so many hundreds of years : 
God's terrors are around it, but, as yet, h is not consumed, 
because he wills that we should fear him before it is too 
late. 

There is, indeed, this great difference ; — that the signs 
of God's presence do not now force themselves upon our 
eyes ; so that we may, if we choose, walk on our own way, 
without turning aside to see and observe them. And thus 
we do not see God, and do not, therefore, hide our faces 
for fear of him, but go on, and feel no fear, till the time 
when we cannot help seeing him. And it may be, that 
this time will never come till our life, and with it our space 
of trial, is gone for ever. 

Here, then, is our state, that God will manifest himself 
no more to us in such a way as that we cannot help seeing 
him. The burning bush will be no more given us as a 
sign ; Christ will no more manifest himself unto the world. 
And yet, unless we do see him, unless we learn to fear 
him while he is yet an unconsuming fire, unless we know 
that he is near, and that the place whereon we stand is 
holy ground, we shall most certainly see him when he will 



276 BECAUSE WE DO NOT SEE IIIM. 

be a consuming fire, and ^Yhen we shall join in crying to 
the mountains, to fail on us, and to the hills, to cover us. 

Every person who thinks at all, must, I am sure, be 
satisfied, that our great want, the great need of our con- 
dition, is this one thing — to realize to ourselves the presence 
of God. It is a want not at all peculiar to the young. 
Thoughtfulness, in one sense, is indeed likely to come with 
advancing years : we are more apt to think at forty than 
at fifteen ; but it by no means follows that we are more 
apt to think about God. In this matter we are nearly at 
a level at all times of our life : it is with all of us our one 
great want, to bring the idea of God, with a living and 
abiding power, home to our minds. 

This is illustrated by a wish ascribed to a great and 
good man — Johnson, and which has been noticed with a 
sneer by unbelievers, a wish that he might see a spirit 
from the other world, to testify to him of the truth of the 
resurrection. This has been sneered at, as if it were a 
confession of the unsatisfactory nature of the evidence 
which we actually possess : but, in truth, it is a confession 
only of the weakness which clings to us all, that things 
unseen, which our reason only assures us to be real, are 
continually overpowered by things afiecting our senses ; 
and, therefore, it was a natural wish that sight might, in 
a manner, come to the aid of reason ; that the eye might 
see, and the ear might hear, a form and words which 
belonged to another world. And this wish might arise (I 
do not say wisely, or that his deliberate judgment would 
sanction it, but it might arise) in the breast of a good man, 
and one who would be willing to lay down his life in proof 
of his belief in Christ's promises. It might arise, not 
because he felt any doubt, when his mind turned calmly to 
the subject ; not because he was hesitating what should be 
the main principle of his life ; but because his experience 



WHAT CAN SUPPLY THIS WANT? 277 

had told him, that there are many times in the life of man 
when the mind does not fully exert itself; when habit and 
impressions rule us, in a manner, in its stead. And when 
so many of our impressions must be earthly, and as our 
impressions colour our habits, is it not natural (I do not 
say^wise, but is it not natural) to desire some one forcible 
unearthly impression, which might, on the other side, 
colour our habits, and so influence us at those times when 
the mind, almost by the necessity of our condition, cannot 
directly interpose its own deliberate decision as our 
authority ? 

No doubt the wish to which I have been alluding is not 
one which our reason would sanction ; but it expresses in 
a very lively and striking manner a want which is most true 
and real, although it proposes an impossible remedy. But 
the question cannot but occur to us, Can it be that our 
heavenly Father, who knows whereof we are made, should 
have intended us to live wholly by faith in this world ? 
That is. Can it have been his will that all visible signs of 
himself should be withdrawn from us ; and that we should 
be left only with the record and the evidence of his mighty 
works done in our behalf in past times ; and with that 
other evidence of his wisdom and power which is afforded 
by the wonders of his creation ? 

We look into the Scriptures and we learn that such was 
not his will. We were to live by faith, indeed, with 
respect to the unseen world, there the sign given was to 
be for ever only the sign of Christ's resurrection. But yet 
it was not designed that the evidence of Christ's ha^^ng 
redeemed us should be sought for only in the records of 
the past ; he purposed that there should be a living record, 
a record that might speak to our senses as well as to our 
reason ; that should continually present us with impres- 
sions of the reality of Christ's salvation; and so might 
24 



278 MAN NATURALLY WITNESSES AGAINST GOD. 

work upon the habits of our life, as insensibly as the air 
we breathe. This living witness, which should last till 
Christ came again, was to be no other than his own body 
instinct with his own Spirit — his people, the temple of the 
Holy Ghost, his holy universal Church. 

If we consider for a moment, this would entirely c^meet 
the want of which I have been speaking. It is possible, 
certainly, to look upon the face of nature without being 
reminded of God ; yet it is surely true, that in the outward 
creation, in the order of the seasons, the laws of the hea- 
venly bodies, the wonderful Avisdom and goodness displayed 
in the constitution of every living thing in its order, there 
is a tendency, at least to impress us with the thought of 
God, if nothing else obstructed it. But there is a constant 
obstruction in the state of man. Looking at men, hearing 
them, considering them, it is not only possible not to be 
reminded of God ; but their very tendency is to exclude 
him from our minds, because the moral workmanship which 
is so predominant in them has assuredly not had God for 
its author. We all in our dealings with one another, lead 
each other away from God. We present to each other's 
view what seems to be a complete world of our own, in 
which God is not. We see a beginning, a middle, and an 
end ; we see faculties for acquiring knowledge, and for 
receiving enjoyment ; and earth furnishes knowledge to 
the one and enjoyment to the other. We see desires, and 
we see the objects to which they are limited ; we see that 
death removes men from all these objects, and consistently 
with this, we observe, that death is generally regarded as 
the greatest of all evils. Man's witness, then, as far as it 
goes, is against the reality of God and of eternity. His 
life, his language, his desires, his understanding appear, 
when we look over the world, to refer to no being higher 



THE TRUE CHURCH WITNESSES TO HIM, 279 

than himself, to no other state of things than that of which 
sight testifies. 

Now, Christ's Church, the living temple of the Holy 
Ghost, puts in the place of this natural and corrupt man, 
whose witness is against God, another sort of man, re- 
deemed and regenerate, whose whole being breathes a 
perpetual witness of God. • Consider, again, what we 
should see in such a Church. We should see a beginning, 
a middle, but the end is not yet visible ; we should see, 
besides the faculties for knowledge and enjoyment which 
were receiving their gratification daily, other faculties of 
both kinds, whose gratification was as yet withheld; we 
should see desires not limited to any object now visible or 
attainable. We should see death looked to as the gate by 
which these hitherto unobtained objects were to be sought 
for ; and we should hear it spoken of, not as the greatest 
of evils, but as an event solemn, indeed, and painful to 
nature, but full of blessing and of happiness. We should 
see love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, 
faith, meekness, temperance ; a constitution of nature as 
manifestly proclaiming its author to be the God of all 
holiness and loving-kindness, as the wonderful structure 
of our eyes or hands declares them to be the work of the 
God of all wisdom and power. We should thus see in all 
our fellow-men, no't only as much, but far more than in the 
constitution of the lower animals, or of the plants, or t)f 
the heavenly bodies, a witness of God and of eternity. 
Their whole lives would be a witness ; their whole conver- 
sation would be a witness ; their outward and more peculiar 
acts of worship would then bear their part in harmony with 
all the rest. Every day would the voices of the Church 
be heard in its services of prayer and thanksgiving ; every 
day would its members renew their pledges of faithfulness 



280 BY THE HOLY LIVES OF ITS MEMBERS : 

to Christ, and to one another, upon partaking together the 
memorials of his sacrifice. 

"What could we desire more than such a living witness as 
this ? What sign in the sky, what momentary appearance 
of a spirit from the unseen world, could so impress us 
with the reality of God, as this daily worshipping in his 
living temple ; this daily sight, of more than the She- 
chinah of old, even of his most Holy Spirit, diffusing on 
every side light and blessing ? And what is now become 
of this witness ? can names, and forms, and ordinances, 
supply its place ? can our unfrequent worship, our most 
seldom communion, impress on us an image of men living 
altogether in the presence of God, and in communion with 
Christ ? But before we dwell on this, we may, while 
considering the design of the true Church of Christ, well 
understand how such excellent things should be spoken of 
it, and how it should have been introduced into the Creed 
itself, following immediately after the mention of the Holy 
Ghost. That holy universal Church was to be the abiding 
witness of Christ's love and of Christ's promises ; not in 
its outward forms only, for they by themselves are not a 
living witness ; they cannot meet our want — to have God 
and heavenly things made real to us ; but in its whole 
spirit, by which renewed man was to bear as visibly the 
image of God, as corrupted man had lost it. This was the 
sure sign that Christ had appointed to abide until his com- 
ing again ; this sign, as striking as the burning bush, 
would compel us to observe ; would make us sure that the 
place whereon we stand is holy ground. 

Then follows the question : With this sign lost in its 
most essential points, how can we supply its place ? and 
how can we best avail ourselves of those parts of it which 
Still remain ? and how can we each endeavour to build up 



HOW CAN WE SUPPLY IT? 281 

a partial and most imperfect imitation of it, which may 
yet, in some sort, serve to supply our great want, and re- 
mind us daily of God ? This opens a wide field for 
thought, to those who are willing to follow it ; but much 
of it belongs to other occasions rather than this : the 
practical part of it, — the means of most imperfectly 
supplying the want of God's own appointed sign, a true 
and living universal Church, shall be the subject of my 
next Lecture. 



24* 



LECTURE XXIX 



Psalm cxxxvii. 4. 
How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land ? 

This was said by the exiles of Jerusalem, when they 
were in the land of their captivity in Babylon. There is 
no reason to suppose that their condition was one of bond- 
age, as it had been in Egypt : the nations removed by 
conquest, under the Persian kings, from their own country 
to another land, were no otherwise ill-treated ; they had 
new homes given them in which they lived unmolested ; 
only they were torn away from their own land, and were 
as sojourners in a land of strangers. But the peculiar 
evil of this state was, that they were torn away from the 
proper seat of their worship. The Jew in Babylon 
might have his own home, and his own land to cultivate, 
as he had in Judaea ; but nothing could replace to him the 
loss of the temple at Jerusalem : there alone could the 
morning and evening sacrifices be offered ; there alone 
could the sin-offering for the people be duly made. 
Banished from the temj)le, therefore, he was deprived also 
of the most solemn part of his religion ; he was, as it 
were, exiled from God ; and the worship of God, as it was 
now left to him, — that is, the offering up of prayers and 
praises, — was almost painful to him, as it reminded him so 
forcibly of his changed condition. 

Such also, in some respects, was to be the state of the 

(282) 



EARTH NOT STRANGE TO CHRISTIANS. 283 

Christian Church after our Lord's ascension. The only 
acceptable sacrifice was now that of their great High 
Priest interceding for them in the presence of the Father : 
heaven was their temple, and they were far removed from 
it upon earth : they, too, like the Jews in Babylon, were a 
little society by themselves living in the midst of strangers. 
"Our citizenship," says St. Paul to the Philippians, "is 
in heaven:" here they were not citizens, but sojourners. 
Why, then, should not the early Christians have joined al- 
together in the feeling of the Jews at Babylon? why 
should not they, too, have felt and said, " How can we 
sing the Lord's song in a strange land ?" 

The answer is contained in what I said last Sunday ; 
because Christ had not left them comfortless or forsaken, 
but was come again to them by his Holy Spirit ; because 
God was dwelling in the midst of them ; because they were 
not exiles from the temple of God, but were themselves 
become God's temple ; because through the virtue of the 
one oflfaring for sin once made, but for ever presented 
before God by their High Priest in heaven, they, in God's 
temple on earth, were presenting also their daily and ac- 
ceptable sacrifice, the sacrifice of themselves; because 
also, though as yet they were a small society in a land of 
strangers, yet the stone formed without hands was to 
become a mighty mountain, and cover the whole earth : 
what was now the land of strangers was to become theirs ; 
the whole earth should be full of the knowledge of the 
Lord; the kingdoms of the world were to become his 
kingdom ; and thus earth, redeemed from the curse of sin, 
was again to be so blessed that God's servants living upon 
it should find it no place of exile. 

But if this, in its reality, does not now exist ; if, althoup;h 
God's temple be on earth, the appointed sacrifice in it is 
not offered, the living sacrifice of ourselves ; if the society 



284 REMAINING VESTIGES OF CHRIST'S CHURCH. 

has, by spreading, become weak, and the kmgdoms of the 
earth are Christ's kingdoms in name alone ; are we, then, 
come back once more to the condition of the Jews in Baby- 
lon ? are we exiles from God, living amongst strangers ? 
and must we, too, say, with the prophet, " How can we 
sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" 

This was the question which I proposed to answer : 
What can we do to make our condition unlike that of exiles 
from God : to restore that true sign of his presence amongst 
us, the living fire of his Holy Spirit pervading every part 
of his temple ? I mean, what can we do as individuals ? 
for the question in any other sense is not to be asked or 
answered here. But we, each of us, must have felt, at 
some time or other, our distance from God. Put the idea 
in what form or what words we will, we must — every one 
of us who has ever thought seriously at all — we must regret 
that there is not a stroncrer and more abidino' influence 
over us, to keep us from evil, and to turn us to good. 

Now, the vestiges of Christ's church left among us are 
chiefly these : our prayers together, whether in oui- families 
or in this place ; our reading of the Scriptures together ; 
our communion, rare as it is, in the memorials of the body 
and blood of Christ our Savioiu'. These are the vestiges 
of that which was designed to be with us always, and in 
every part of our lives, the holy temple of God, his living 
church ; but which now presents itself to us only at par- 
ticular times, and places, and actions ; in oui' worship and 
in our joint reading of the Scriptures, and in our com- 
munion. 

It will be understood at once why I have not spoken 
here of prayer and reading the Scriptures by ourselves 
alone. ^lost necessary as these are to us, yet they do not 
belong to the helps ministered to us by the church ; they 
belong to us each as individuals, and in these respects we 



COMMON PRAYER. 285 

must be in the same state every where : these were enjoyed 
by the Jews even in their exile in Babylon. But the 
church acts upon us through one another, and therefore 
the vest iges of the church can only be sought for in what we 
do, not alone, but together. I, therefore, noticed only that 
prayer, and that reading of the Scriptures, in which many 
of us took part in common. 

Such common prayer takes place amongst us every 
mornini'; and evening, as well as on Sundays within these 
walls. Whenever we meet on those occasions, w^e meet as 
Christ's church. Now, conceive how the effect of such 
meetings depends on the conduct of each of us. It is not 
necessary to notice behaviour openly profane and disor- 
derly : this does not occur amongst us. We see, however, 
that if it did occur in any meeting for the purposes of 
religious worship, such a meeting would do us harm rather 
than good : its witness to us would not be in favour of 
God, but against him. But take another case : when we 
are assembled for prayers, suppose our behaviour, without 
being d'sorderly, was yet so manifestly indifferent as to be 
really iiidecent ; that is, suppose every countenance showed 
such manifest signs of weariness, and impatience, and want 
of inter -^st in what was going forward, that it was evident 
there w is no general sympathy with any feeling of devo- 
tion. Would not the effect here also be injurious ? would 
not suc'i a meeting also shock and check our approaches 
towards God ? w^ould it not rather convince us that God 
was really far distant from us, instead of showing that he 
was in the midst of us ? 

Ascend one step higher. Our behaviour is neither dis- 
orderly, nor manifestly indifferent : it is decent, serious, 
respect 'ul. What is the effect in this case ? Not abso- 
lutely unfavourable certainly ; but yet far from being much 
help towards good. We bear our witness that we are 



286 COMMON PRAYER. 

engaged in a matter that should be treated with reverence : 
this is very right ; but do we more than this ? Do we 
show that we are engaged in a matter that commands our 
interest also, as well as our respect ? If not, our witness 
is not the witness of Christ's church : it does not go to 
declare that God is in us of a truth. 

Let us go on one step more. We meet together to 
pray : we are orderly, we are quiet, we are serious ; but 
the countenance shows that we are something more than 
these. There is on it the expression, never to be mis- 
taken, of real interest. Remember I am speaking of 
meetings for prayer, where the words are perfectly fami- 
liar to us, and vrhere the interest therefore cannot be the 
mere interest of novelty. Say, then, that our counte- 
nances express interest: I do not mean strong and excited 
feeling; but interest, which may be very real yet very 
quiet also. We look as if we thought of what we were 
engaged in, of what we are ourselves, and of what God is 
to us. We are joined in one common feeling of thankful- 
ness to him for mercies past, of wishing for his help and 
love for the time to come. Now, think what would be the 
effect of such a meeting. Would it not be, clearly, posi- 
tively good ! Would not every individual's earnestness be 
confirmed by the manifest earnestness of others ? Would 
not his own sense of God's reality be rendered stronger, 
by seeing that others felt it just as he did ? Then, here 
would be the church of God rendering her appointed 
witness : she would be giving her sure sign that God is not 
far from any one of us. 

Now, then, observe what we may lose or gain by our 
different behaviour, whenever we meet together in prayer ; 
what we lose, nay, what positive mischief we do, by any 
visible impatience or indifference ; what we should gain by 
really joining in our hearts in the meaning of what was 



KEADIXG OF THE SCRIPTURES. 287 

uttered. It is a solemn thing for the consciences of us 
all ; but surely it must be true, that, whenever we are 
careless or indifferent in our public prayers, we are actually 
injuring our neighbours, and are, so far as in us lies, de- 
stroying the witness which the church of Christ should 
render to the truth of God her Saviour. 

I do not know that there is anything more impressive 
than the sight of a congregation evidently in earnest in 
the service in which they are engaged. We then feel how 
different is our own lonely prayer from the united voice of 
many hearts ; each cheering, strengthening, enkindling 
the other. "We then consider one another to provoke unto 
love and good works. How different are the feelings with 
which we regard a number of persons met for any common 
purpose, and the same persons engaged together in serious 
prayer or praise! Then Christ seems to appear to us in 
each of them ; we are all one in him. How little do all 
earthly unkindnesses, dislikes, prejudices, become in our 
eyes, when the real bond of our commoii faith is discerned 
clearly ! There is indeed neither Greek nor Jew, circum- 
cision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor 
free, but Christ is all, and in all. And to look at our 
brethren, once or twice in every day, with these Christian 
eyes, would it not also, by degrees, impress us at other 
times, and begin to form something of our habitual temper 
and regard towards them ? 

Thus much of our meetings for prayer. One word only 
on those in which we meet to read the Scriptures. Here 
I know, that difference of age, and our peculiar relations 
to each other, make us very apt to lose the religious cha- 
racter of our readings of the Scriptures, and to regard 
them merely as lessons. No doubt, the object here is in- 
struction ; it is not so much in itself a religious exercise, 
as a means to enable you to perform religious exercises 



288 HOLY COMMUNION. 

witli understanding and sincerity. Still there Is a peculiar 
character attached even to lessons, when they are taken 
out of the Scriptures : and the duty of attention and in- 
terest in the work becomes even stronger than under other 
circumstances. But with those of a more advanced age, 
I think there is more than this ; I think it must be our 
own fault, if, whilst engaged together in reading the Scrip- 
tures, which we only read because we are Christians, we 
do not feel that there also we are employed on a duty be- 
longing to the Church of Christ. 

Lastly, there is our joint communion in the bread, and 
in the cup, of the Lord's Supper. Here there is serious- 
ness ; here there is always, I trust and believe, something 
of real interest ; and, therefore, we never, I thirk, meet 
together at the Lord's table, without feeling a triie effect 
of Christ's gifts to and in his Church ; we are strergthened 
and brought nearer to one another, and to him. But this 
most precious pledge of Christ's Church we too often for- 
feit for ourselves. That we have lost so much of rhe help 
which the Church was designed to give, is not o ir fault 
individually ; but it is our fault that we neglect this means 
of strength, so great in bearing witness to Christ, and in 
kindling love towards one another. What can be said of 
us, if, with so many helps lost, we throw away thc.t which 
still remains ? if, of the great treasure which the Church 
yet keeps, we are wilfully ignorant? How murh good 
might we do, both to ourselves and to each other, by 
joining in that communion ! How surely should we be 
strengthened in all that is good, and have a help from 
each other, through his Spirit working in us all, to 
struggle against our evil ! 



LECTURE XXX 



1 Corinthians xi. 26. 

For as often as ye eat iliis bread and drink this cup^ ye do show the 
Lord^s death till he come. 

When I spoke last Sunday of the benefits yet to be 
derived from Christ's Church, I spoke of them, as being, 
for the most part, three in number — our communion in 
prayer, our communion in reading the Scriptures, and our 
communion in the Lord's Supper ; and, after having spoken 
of the first two of these, I proposed to leave the third for 
our consideration to-day. 

The words of the text are enough to show how closely 
this subject is connected with that event which we celebrate 
to-day : ' "As often as ye eat this bread, and drink this 
cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come." The 
communion, then, with one another in the Lord's Supper 
is doing that which this day was also designed to do ; it is 
showing forth, or declaring the Lord's death ; it is declar- 
ing, in the face of all the world, that we partake of the 
Lord's Supper because we believe that Christ our Passover 
was sacrificed for us. 

God might, no doubt, if it had so pleased him, have 
made all spiritual blessing come to us immediately from 
himself. Without ascending any higher with the idea, it is 
plain that Christianity might have been made a thing 

^ Good Friday. 
25 (289) 



290 

"wholly between each individual man and Christ ; all our 
\vorship might have been the secret worship of our own 
hearts ; and in eating the bread, and drinking the cup, to 
show forth the Lord's death, each one of us might have 
done this singly, holding communion with Christ alone. 
I mean, that it is quite conceivable that we should have had 
Christianity, and a great number of Christians spread all 
over the world, but yet no Christian Church. But, although 
this is conceivable, and, in fact, is practically the case in 
some particular instances where individual Christians 
happen to be quite cut off from all other Christians, — as 
has been known sometimes in foreign and remote countries ; 
and although,, through various evil causes, it has become, 
in many respects, too much the case with us all ; for our 
religion is with all of us, I am inclined to think, too much 
a matter betwen God and ourselves alone ; yet still it is 
not the design of Christ that it should be so : his people 
were not only to be good men, redeemed from sin and death 
and brought to know and love the truth, in which relation 
Christianity would appear like a divine philosophy only, 
working not only upon individuals, but through their 
individual minds, and as individuals ; but they were to be 
the Christian Church, helping one another in things 
pertaining to God, and making their mutual brotherhood 
to one another an essential part of what are called peculi- 
arly their acts of religion. So that the Church of Eng- 
land seems to have well borne in mind this character of 
Christianity, namely, that it presents us not each, but all 
together, before God ; and therefore it is ordered that even 
in very small parishes, where " there are not more than 
twenty persons in the parish of discretion to receive the 
communion, yet there shall be no communion, except four, 
or three at the least, out of these twenty communicate 
together with the priest." Nay, even in the Communion 



BUT TOGETHEH AVITH OUR BRETHREN. 291 

of the Sick, under circumstances which seem to make 
religion particularly an individual matter botween Christ 
and our own single selves ; when the expected approach of 
death seems to separate, in the most marked manner, 
according to human judgment, him who is going hence 
from his brethren still in the world ; even then it is 
ordered that two other persons, at the least, shall commu- 
nicate along with the sick man and the minister. Nor is 
this ever relaxed except in times of pestilence ; when it is 
provided, that if no other person can be persuaded to join 
from their fear of infection, then, and then only upon 
special request of the diseased, the minister may alone 
communicate with them. So faithfully does our Church 
adhere to this true Christian notion, that at the Lord's 
Supper we are not to communicate with Christ alone, but 
with him in and together with our brethren; so that 
I was justified in regarding the Holy Communion as one of 
those helps and blessings which we still derive from the 
Christian Church — from Christ's mystical body. 

It is the natural process of all false and corrupt reli- 
gions, on the contrary, to destroy this notion of Christ's 
Church, and to lead away our thoughts from our brethren 
in matters of religion, and to fix them merely upon God as 
known to us through a priest. The great evil in this is, 
(if there is an}^ one evil greater than another in a system 
so wholly made up of falsehood, and so leading to all 
wickedness ; but, at any rate, one great evil of it is,) that 
whereas the greatest part of all our lives is engaged in our 
relations tovrards our brethren, that there lie most of our 
temptations to evil, as well as of our opportunities of 
good, if our brethren do not form an essential part of our 
religious views, it follows, and always has followed, that 
our behaviour and feelings towards them are guided by 
views and principles not religious ; and that by this fatal 



292 WE ARE TOO APT TO FORGET THIS. 

separation of what God has joined together, our worship 
and religious services become superstitious, while our life 
and actions become worldly, in the bad sense of the term, 
low principled, and profane. 

If this is not so clear when put into a general form, it 
will be plain enough when I show it in that particular ex- 
ample which we are concerned with here. Nowhere, I 
believe, is the temptation stronger to lose sight of one 
another in our religious exercises, and especially in our 
Communion. Our serious thoughts in turning to God, 
turn away almost instinctively from our companions about 
us. Practically, as far as the heart is concerned, we are 
a great deal too apt to go to the Lord's table each alone. 
But consider how much we lose by this. We are necessa- 
rily in constant relations with one another ; some of those 
relations are formal, others are trivial ; we connect each 
other every day with a great many thoughts, I do not say 
of unkindness, but yet of that indifferent character which 
is no hindrance to any unkindness when the temptation to 
it happens to arise. This must always be the case in 
life ; business, neighbourhood, i^leasure, — the occasions of 
most of our intercourse with one another, — have in them 
nothing solemn or softening : they have in themselves but 
little tendency to lead us to the love of one another. 
Now, if this be so in the world, it is even more so here; 
your intercourse with one another is much closer and more 
constant than what can exist in after life with any but the 
members of your own family ; and yet the various rela- 
tions which this intercourse has to do with, are even less 
serious and less softening than those of ordinary life in 
manhood. The kindliness of feeling which is awakened in 
after years between two men, by the remembrance of 
having been at school together, even without any parti- 
cular acquaintance with each other, is a very different 



GOOD OF REMEMBERING IT. 293 

thing from the feeling of being at school with each other 
now. I do not wonder, then, that any one of you, when 
he resolves to come to the Holy Communion, should rather 
try to turn away his thoughts from his companions, and to 
think of himself alone as being concerned in what he is 
going to do. I do not wonder at it ; but, then, neither do 
I wonder that, when the Communion is over, and thoughts 
of his companions must return, they receive little or no 
colour from his religious act so lately performed ; that 
they are as indifferent as they were before, as little fur- 
nishing a security against neglect, or positive unkindness, 
or encouragement of others to evil. Depend upon it, un- 
less your common life is made a part of your religion, 
your religion will never sanctify your common life. 

Now consider, on the one hand, what might be the effect 
of going to the Holy Communion with a direct feeling 
that, in that Communion, we, though many, were all 
brought together in Christ Jesus. And first, I will speak 
of our thoughts of those who are partakers of the Com- 
munion with us, then of those who are not. When others 
are gone out, and we who are to communicate are left 
alone with each other, then, if we perceive that there are 
many of us, the first natural feeling is one of joy, that we 
are so many ; that our party, — that only true and good 
party to which we may belong with all our hearts, — that 
our party, — that Christ's party, seems so considerable. 
Then there comes the thought, that we are all met to- 
gether freely, willingly, not as a matter of form, to re- 
ceive the pledges of Christ's love to us, to pledge ourselves 
to him in return. If we are serious, those around us may 
be supposed to be serious too ; if we wish to have help 
from God to lead a holier life, they surely wish the same ; 
if the thought of past sin is humbling us, the same shame 
is working in our brethren's bosoms ; if we are secretly 
25* 



294 GOOD OF REMEMBERING IT. 

resolving, by God's grace, to serve him in earnest, the 
hearts around us are, no doubt, resolving the same. 
There is the consciousness, (when and where else can we 
enjoy it ?) that we are in sympathy with all present ; that, 
coloured merely by the lesser distinctions of individual 
character, one and the same current of feeling is working 
within us all. And, if feeling this of our sympathy with 
one another, how strongly is it heightened by the thought 
of what Christ has done for us all! We are all loving 
him, because he loved us all ; we are going together to 
celebrate his death, because he died for us all ; we are re- 
solving all to serve him, because his Holy Spirit is given 
to us all, and we are all brought to drink of the same 
Spirit. Then let us boldly carry our thoughts a little for- 
ward to that time, only a short hour hence, when we shall 
again be meeting one another, in very different relations ; 
even in those common indiiferent relations of ordinary life 
which are connected so little with Christ. Is it impossible 
to think, that, although we shall meet without these walls 
in very different circumstances, yet that we have seen 
each other pledging ourselves to serve Christ together ? if 
the recollection of this lives in us, why should it not live 
in our neighbour ? If we are labouring to keep alive our 
good resolutions made at Christ's table, why should we 
think that others have forgotten them ? We do not talk 
of them openly, yet still they exist within us. May not 
our neighbour's silence also conceal within his breast the 
same good purposes ? At any rate, we may and ought to 
regard him as ranged on our side in the great struggle of 
life ; and if outward circumstances do not so bring us 
together as to allow of our openly declaring our sympathy, 
yet we may presume that it still exists ; and this conscious- 
ness may communicate to the ordinary relations of life 



GOOD OF REMEMBERING IT. 295 

that very softness which they need, in order to make them 
Christian. 

Again, with regard to those who go out, and do not ap- 
proach to the Lord's table. With some it is owing to their 
youth ; with others to a mistaken notion of their youth ; 
with others to some less excusable reason, perhaps, but yet 
to such as cannot yet exclude kindness and hope. But 
having once felt what it is to be only with those who are 
met really as Christians, our sense of what it is to want 
this feeling is proportionably raised. Is it sad to us to 
think that our neighbour does not look upon us as fellow 
Christians ? is it something cold to feel that he regards us 
only in those common worldly relations which leave men 
in heart so far asunder ? Then let us take heed that we 
*do not ourselves feel so towards him. We have learnt to 
judge more truly, to feel more justly, of our relations to 
every one who bears Christ's name : if we forget this, we 
have no excuse ; for we have been at Christ's table, and 
have been taught what Christians are to one another. And 
let our neighbour be ever so careless, yet we know that 
Christ cares for him ; that his Spirit has not yet forsaken 
him, but is still striving with him. And if God vouchsafes 
so much to him, how can we look upon him as though he 
were no way connected with us ? how can we be as careless 
of his welfare, as apt either to annoy him, or to lead him 
into evil, or to take no pains to rescue him from it, as if he 
were no more to us than the accidental inhabitant of the 
same place, who was going on his way as we may be on 
ours, neither having any concern with the other ? 

And, now, is it nothing to learn so to feel towards those 
around us; to have thus gained what will add kindness 
-and interest to all our relations with others ; and, in the 
case of many, will give an abiding sense of the truest 
sympathy, and consequently greater confidence and en- 



296 GOOD OF REMEMBERING IT. 

courageroent to ourselves? Be sure that this is not to 
profane the Lord's Supper, but to use it according to 
Christ's own ordinance. For though the thoughts of which 
I have been speaking, have, in one sense, man and not 
God for their object, yet as they do not begin in man but 
in Christ, and in his love to us all, so neither do they, 
properly speaking, rest in man as such, but convert him, 
as it were, into an image of Christ : so that their end, as 
well as their beginning, is with Him. I do earnestly 
desire that you would come to Christ's table, in order to 
learn a Christian's feelings towards one another. This is 
what you want every day ; and the absence of which leads 
to more and worse faults than, perhaps, any other single 
cause. But, then, this Christian feeling towards one 
another, how is it to be gained but by a Christian feeling* 
towards Christ ? and where are we to learn brotherly love 
in all our common dealings, but from a grateful thought 
of that Divine love towards us all which is shown forth in 
the sacrament of the Lord's Supper ; inasmuch as, so 
often as we eat that bread and drink that cup, we do show 
the Lord's death till He come. 



LECTURE XXXI. 



LrKE i. 3, 4. 



It seemed good to me also, Jiaving had perfect understanding of all 
things from the very frst, to write unto thee in order, most excellent 
Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things 
icherein thou hast been instructed. 

These words, from the preface to St. Luke's Gospel, 
contain in them one or two points on which it may be of 
use to dwell ; and not least so at the present time, when 
they are more frequently brought under our notice than 
was the case a few years ago. On a subject which we 
never, or very rarely hear mentioned, it may be difficult 
to excite attention ; and, as a general rule, there is little 
use in making the attempt. But when names and notions 
are very frequently brought to our ears, and in a degree 
to our minds, then it becomes important that we should 
comprehend the matter to which they relate clearly and 
correctly ; and a previous interest respecting it may be 
supposed to exist, which make further explanation ac- 
ceptable. 

St. Luke tells Theophilus that it seemed good to him to 
write in order an account of our Lord's life and death, 
that Theophilus might know the certainty of those things 
in which he had been instructed ; and this, as a general 
rule, might well describe one great use of the Scripture to 
each of us, as individual members of Christ's Church — it 

(297) 



298 THE TEST OF TEACHING. 

enables us to know the certainty of the things in whicli 
we have been instructed. "We do not, in the first instance, 
get our knowledge of Christ from the Scriptures, — we, 
each of us, I mean as individuals, — but from the teaching 
of our parents first ; then of our instructors, and from 
books fitted for the instruction of children ; whether it be 
the Catechism of the Church, or books written by private 
persons, of which we know that there are many. But as 
our minds open, and our opportunities of judging for 
ourselves increase, then the Scripture presents itself to 
acquaint us with the certainty of what we had heard 
already ; to show us the original and perfect truth, of 
which we have, received impressions before, but such as 
were not original nor perfect; to confirm and enforce all 
that was good and true in our early teaching ; and if it 
should so happen that it contained any thing of grave 
error mixed with truth, then to enable us to discover and 
reject it. 

It is apparent, then, that the Scripture, to do this, 
must have an authority distinct from, and higher than, 
that of our early teaching ; but yet it is no less true that 
it comes to us individually recommended, in the first 
instance, by the authority of our early teaching, and 
received by us, not for its own sake, but for the sake of 
those who put it into our hands. What child can, by 
possibility, go into the evidence which makes it reason- 
able to believe the Bible, and to reject the authority of 
the Koran ? Our children believe the Bible for our sakes ; 
they look at it with respect, because we tell them that it 
ought to be respected ; they read it, and learn it, because 
we desire them ; they acquire a habit of veneration for 
it long before they could give^ any other reason for 
venerating it than their parents' authority. And blessed 
be God that they do ; for, as it has been well said, if we 



APPEAL TO EVIDENCE. 299 

their parents do not endeavour to give our children habits 
of love and respect for what is good and true, Satan will 
give them habits of love for what is evil: for the child 
must receive impressions from without ; and it is God's 
wisdom that he should receive these impressions from his 
parents, who have the strongest interest in his welfare, 
and who have besides that instinctive parental love which, 
more surely, as well as more purely, than any possible 
sense of interest, makes them earnestly desire their child's 
good. 

But when our children are old enough to understand 
and to inquire, do we then content ourselves with saying 
that they must take our word for it ; that the Bible is true 
because we tell them so ? Where is the father who does 
not feel, first, that he himself is not fitted to be an infalli- 
ble authority ; and, secondly, that if he were, he should 
be thwarting the providence of God, who has w^illed not 
simply that we should believe with understanding. He 
gladly therefore observes the beginnings of a spirit of 
inquiry in his son's mind, knowing that it is not inconsistent 
■with a belief in truth, but is a necessary step to that which 
alone in a man deserves the name of belief — a belief, 
namely, sanctioned by reason. With what pleasure does 
he point out to his son the grounds of his own faith ! how 
gladly does he introduce him to the critical and historical 
evidence for the truth of the Scriptures, that he may 
complete the work which he had long since begun, and 
deliver over the faith which had been so long nursed under 
the shade of parental authority, to the care of his son's 
own conscience and reason ! 

We see clearly that our individual faith, although 
grounded in the first instance on parental authority, yet 
rests afterwards on v.holly difierent grounds ; namely, on 
the direct evidence in confirmation of it which is presented 



300 DO WE HECEIVE THE SCRIPTURES 

to our own minds. But with regard to those who are 
called the Fathers of the Church, it is contended some- 
times that we do receive the Scriptures, in the end, upon 
their authority : and it is argued, that if their authority is 
sufficient for so great a thing as this, it must be sufficient 
for every thing else ; that if, in short, we believe the 
Scriptures for their sake, then we ought also to believe 
other things which they may tell us, for their sake, even 
though they are not to be found in Scripture. 

In the argument there is this great fault, that it mis- 
states the question at the outset. The authority of the 
Fathers, as they are called, is never to any sound mind the 
only reason for believing in the Scriptures ; I think it is by 
no means so much as the principle reason. It is one 
reason, amongst many; but not the strongest. And, in 
like manner, their authority in other points, if there were 
other and stronger reasons which confirmed it, — as in 
many cases there are, — is and ought to be respected. But, 
because we lay a certain stress upon it, it does not follow 
that we should do well to make it bear the whole weight 
of the building. Because we believe the Scriptures, 
partly on the authority of the Fathers, as they are 
called, but more for other reasons, does it follow that we 
should equally respect the authority of the Fathers when 
there are no other reasons in support of it, but many 
which make against it ? 

In truth, however, the internal evidence in favour of the 
authenticity and genuineness of the Scriptures is that on 
which the mind can rest with far greater satisfaction than 
on any external testimonies, however valuable. On one 
point, which might seem most to require other evidence — 
the age, namely, and origin of the writings of the New 
Testament — it has been wonderfully ordered that the 
books, generally speaking, are their own witness. I mean 



ON THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH? 301 

that their peculiar language proves them to have been 
written by persons such as the apostles were, and such as 
the Christian writers immediately following them were 
not ; persons, namely, whose original language and habits 
of thinking were those of Jews, and to whom the Greek in 
which they wrote was, in its language and associations, 
essentially foreign. I do not dwell on the many other 
points of internal evidence : it is sufficient to say that 
those who are most familar with such inquiries, and who 
best know how little any external testimony can avail in 
favour of a book where the internal evidence is against it, 
are most satisfied that the principal writings of the New 
Testament do contain abundantly in themselves, for com- 
petent judges, the evidence of their own genuineness and 
authenticity. 

That the testimony of the early Christian writers goes 
along with this evidence and confirms it, is matter indeed 
of sincere thankfulness ; because more minds, perhaps, are 
able to believe on external evidence than on internal. But 
of this testimony of the Christian writers it is essential to 
observe, that two very important points are such as do in- 
deed afiect this particular question much, but yet do not 
confer any value on the judgment of the witness in other 
matters. When a very early Christian writer quotes a 
passage from the New Testament, such as we find it now 
in our Bibles, it is indeed an argument, which all can un- 
derstand, that he had before him the same Bible which we 
have, and that though he lived so near to the beginning 
of the gospel, yet that some parts of the New Testament 
must have been written still nearer to it. This is an evi- 
dence to the age of the New Testament, valuable indeed 
to us, but implying in the writer who gives it no qualities 
which confer authority; it merely shows that the book 
which he read must have existed before he could quote it. 
26 



302 SCRIPTURE OUR SOLE RULE OF FAITH, 

A second point of evidence is, when a very early Christian 
writer quotes any part of the New Testament as heing 
considered by those to whom he was writing as an authority. 
This, again, is a valuable piece of testimony ; but neither 
does it imply any general wisdom or authority in the 
writer who gives it : its value is derived merely from the 
age at which he lived, and not from his personal character. 
And with regard to the general reception of the New Tes- 
tament by the Christians of his time, which, in the case 
supposed, he states as a fact, no doubt that the general 
opinion of the early Christians, where, as in this case, we 
can be sure that it is reported correctly, is an authority, 
and a great authority, in favour of the Scriptures : com- 
bined, as it is, with the still stronger internal evidence of 
the books themselves, it is irresistible. But it were too 
much to argue that, therefore, it was alone sufficient, not 
only when destitute of other evidence, but if opposed to it ; 
and especially if it should happen to be opposed to that 
very Scripture which we know they acknowledged to be 
above themselves, but which we do not know that they 
were enabled in all cases either rightly to interpret or 
faithfully to follow. 

When, therefore, we are told that, as we believe the 
Scriptures themselves upon tradition, so we should believe 
other things also, the answer is, that we do not believe the 
Scriptures either entirely or principally, upon what is 
called tradition ; but for their own internal evidence ; and 
that the opinions of the early Christians, like those of 
other men, may be very good in certain points, and to a 
certain degree, without being good in all points, and abso- 
lutely ; that many a man's judgment would justly weigh 
with us, in addition to other strong reasons in the case 
itself, when we should by no means follow it where we 
were clear that there were strong reasons against it. 



BUT NOT OUR SOLE TEACHER. 303 

This, indeed, is so obvious, that it seems almost foolish to 
be at the trouble of stating it ; but what is so absurd in 
common life, that the contrary to it is a mere truism, is, 
unfortunately, when apj^lied to a subject with which we are 
not familiar, often considered as an unanswerable argu- 
ment, if it happen to suit our disposition or our prejudices. 
But, although the Scripture is to the Church, and to 
the individual, too, who is able to judge for himself, the 
only decisive authority in matters of faith, yet we must 
not forget that it comes to us as it did to Theophilus, to 
persuade us of the certainty of things in which we have 
been already instructed ; not to instruct from the begin- 
ning, by itself alone, those to whom its subject is entirely 
strange : in other words, it is and ought to be the general 
rule, that the Church teaches, and the Scripture confirms 
that teaching : or, if it be in any part erroneous, reproves 
it. For some appear to think, that by calling the Scrip- 
ture the sole authority in matters of faith, we mean to ex- 
clude the Church altogether ; and to call upon every man, 
— nay, upon every child, — to make out his own religion 
for himself from the volume of the Scriptures. The ex- 
planation briefly given is this ; that while the Scripture 
alone teaches the Church, the Church teaches individuals ; 
and that the authority of her teaching, like that of all 
human teaching, whether of individuals or societies, varies 
justly according to circumstances ; being received, as it 
ought to be, almost implicitly by some, as a parent's is by 
a child, and by others listened to with respect, as that 
which is in the main agreeable to the truth, but still not 
considered to be, nor really claiming to be received as, in- 
fallible. But this part of the subject wiJl require to be 
considered by itself on another occasion. 



LECTURE XXXII 



Luke i. 3, 4. 



It seemed good io me also, having had loerfect understanding of all 
things from the very first, to icrite unto thee in order, most excellent 
Theophiliis, that thou mightest Jcnoio the certainty of those things 
in which thou hast been instructed. 

I SAID at the conclusion of my lecture, last Sunday, that 
when T\'e of the Church of England assert that the Scrip- 
ture is the sole authority in matters of faith, we by no 
means mean to exclude the office of the Church, nor to 
assert any thing so extravagant, as that it is the duty of 
every person to sit down with the volume of the Scriptures 
in his hand, and to make out from that alone, without 
listening to any human authority, what is the revelation 
made by God to man. But I know that many are led to 
adopt notions no less extravagant of the authority of the 
Church and of tradition, — even to the full extent main- 
tained by the Church of Rome, — because they see no other 
refuge from what appears to them, and not unreasonably, 
so miserable and so extreme a folly ; for an extreme and 
a most miserable folly doubtless it would be, in any one, 
to throw aside all human aid except his own ; to disregard 
alike the wisdom of individuals, and the agreeing decisions 
of bodies of men ; to act as if none but himself had ever 
loved truth, or had been able to discover it ; and as if he 
himself did possess both the will and the power to do so. 

This is so foolish, that I doubt whether any one ever 

(304) 



MODESTY IS NOT BLIND SUBMISSION. 305 

lield siicli notions, and, much more, whether he acted upon 
them. But is it more wise to run from one form of error 
into its opposite, which, generally speaking, is no less 
foolish and extravagant ? What should we say of a man 
who could see no middle course between never asking for 
advice, and always blindly following it ; between never 
accepting instruction upon any subject, and believing his 
instructors infallible ? And this last comparison, with our 
particular situation here, will enable us, I think, by refer- 
ring to our own daily experience, to understand the present 
question sufficiently. The whole system of education sup- 
poses, undoubtedly, that the teacher, in those matters 
which he teaches, should be an authority to the taught : a 
learner in any matter must rely on the books, and on the 
living instructors, out of which and from whom he is to 
learn. There are difficulties, certainly, in all learning; 
but we do not commonly see them increased by a disposi- 
tion on the part of the learner to question and dispute 
every thing that" is told him. There is a feeling rather of 
receiving what he is told implicitly ; and, by so doing, he 
learns : but does it ever enter into his head that his 
teacher is infallible ? or does any teacher of sane mind 
wish him to think so ? And observe, now, what is the 
actual process : the mind of the learner is generally docile, 
trustful, respectful towards his teacher; aware, also, of 
his own comparative ignorance. It is certainly most right 
that it should be so. But this really teachable and humble 
learner finds a false spelling in one of his books ; or hears 
his teacher, from oversight, say one word in his explana- 
tion instead of another : does he cease to be teachable and 
humble, — is it really a want of childlike faith, and an in- 
dulgence of the pride of reason, if he decides that the false 
spelling was an error of the press ; that the word which 
his teacher used was a mistake ? Yet errors, mistakes, of 
26* 



806 

how trifling a kind soever, are inconsistent with infallibility ; 
and the perceiving that they are errors is an exercise of 
our individual judgment upon our instructors. To hear 
some men talk, we should think that no boy could do so 
without losing all humility and all teachableness ; without 
forth^vith supposing that he was able to be his own 
instructor. 

I have begun on purpose with an elementary case, in 
which a very young boy might perceive an error in his 
books, or in his instructors, without, in any degree, forfeit- 
ing his true humility. But we will now go somewhat 
farther : we will take a more advanced student, such as the 
oldest of those among you, who are still learners, and who 
know that they have much to learn, but who, having been 
learners for some time past, have also acquired some 
knowledge. In the books which they refer to, and from 
which they are constantly deriving assistance, do they 
never observe any errors in the printing ? do they never 
find explanations given, which they perceive to be imperfect, 
nay, which they often feel to be actually wrong ? And, 
passing from books to living instructors, should we blame 
a thoughtful, attentive, and well-informed pupil, because 
his mind did not at once acquiesce in our interpretation of 
some difficult passage ; because he consulted other authori- 
ties on the subject, and was unsatisfied in his judgment ; 
the reason of his hesitation being, that our interpretation 
appeared to him to give an unsatisfactory sense, or to be 
obtained by violating the rules of language ? Is he proud, 
rebellious, puifed up, wanting in a teachable spirit, without 
faith, without humility, because he so ventures to judge 
for himself of what his teacher tells him ? Does such a 
judging for himself interfere, in the slightest degree, with 
the relation between us and him ? Does it make him 
really cease to respect us ? or dispose him to believe that 



CEASIKG SOMETIMES ALTOGETHER. 307 

he is altogether beyond the reach of our instruction? 
Or are we so mad as to regard our authority as wholly set 
at nought, because it is not allowed to be infallible ? 
Doubtless, it would be wholly set at nought, if we had 
presnmed to be infallible. Then it would not be merely 
that, in some one particular point, our decision had been 
doubted, but that one point would involve our authority in 
all ; because it would prove, that we had set up beforehand 
a false claim : and he who does so is either foolish, or a 
deceiver ; there is apparent a flaw either in his understand- 
ing, or in his principles, which undoubtedly does repel 
respect. 

Let me go on a step farther still. It has been my 
happiness to retain, in after years, my intercourse with 
many of those who were formerly my pupils ; to know them 
when their minds have been matured, and their education, 
in the ordinary sense of the term, completed. Is not the 
relation between us altered then still more ? Is it incom- 
patible with true respect and regard, that they should now 
judge still more freely, in those very points, I mean, in 
which heretofore they had received my instructions all but 
implicitly? that on points of scholarship and criticism, 
they should entirely think for themselves ? Or does this 
thinking for themselve mean, that they will begin to ques- 
tion all they had ever learnt ? or sit down to forget pur- 
posely all their school instructions, and make out a new 
knowledge of the ancient languages for themselves ? Who 
does not know, that they whose minds are most eager to 
discern truth, are the very persons who prize their early 
instruction most, and confess how much they are indebted 
to it ; and that the exercise of their judgments leads them 
to go on freely in the same path in which they have walked 
so long, here and there it may be departing from it where 



808 THIS HOLDS GOOD WITH THE CUURCH. 

they find a better line, but going on towards the same ob- 
ject, and generally in the same direction ? 

What has been the experience of my life, — the con- 
stantly observing the natural union between sense and 
modesty ; the perfect compatibility of respect for instruc- 
tion with freedom of judgment; the seeing how Nature 
herself teaches us to proportion the implicitness of our 
belief to our consciousness of ignorance : to rise gradually 
and gently from a state of passively leaning, as it w^ere, on 
the arm of another, to resting more and more of our 
weight on our own limbs, and, at last, to standing alone, 
this has perpetually exemplified our relations, as individ- 
uals, to the Church. Taught by her, in our childhood and 
youth, under all circumstances ; taught by her, in the 
great majority of instances, through our whole lives ; 
never, in any case, becoming so independent of her as we 
do in riper years, of the individual instructor of our 
youth ; she has an abiding claim on our respect, on our 
deference, on our regard : but if it should be, that her 
teaching contained any thing at variance with God's word, 
we should perceive it more or less clearly, according to our 
degrees of knowledge ; we should trust or mistrust our 
judgment, according to our degree of knowledge; but in 
the last resort, as we suppose that even a young boy might 
be sure that his book was in error, in the case of a mani- 
fest false print, so there may be things so certainly incon- 
sistent with Scripture, that a common Christian may be 
able to judge of them, and to say that they are like false 
prints in his lesson, they are manifest errors, not tp be 
followed, but avoided. So far he may be said to judge 
of his teacher ; but not the less will he respect and listen 
to her authority in general, unless she has herself made 
the slightest error ruinous to her authority by claiming to^ 
be in all points, great or small, alike infallible. 



LIFE HAS NO INFALLIBLE TEACHER. 309 

Men crave a general rule for their guidance at all times, 
and under all circumstances ; -whereas life is a constant 
call upon us to consider how far one general rule, in the 
particular case before us, is modified by another, or where 
one rule should be applied, and where another. To sepa- 
rate humility from idolatry, conscience from presumption, 
is often an arduous task : to different persons there is a 
different besetting danger ; so it is under different circum- 
stances, and at different times. Every day does the sea- 
man, on a voyage, take his observations, to know where- 
abouts he is ; he compares his position with his charts ; he 
considers the direction of the wind, and the set of the cur- 
rent, or tide ; and from all these together, he judges on 
which side his danger lies, on what course he should steer, 
or how much sail he may venture to carry. This is an 
image of our own condition : we cannot have a general 
rule to tell us where we should follow others, and where 
we must differ from them ; to say what is modesty, and 
what is indolence ; what is a proper deference to others, 
and what is a trusting in man so far, that it becomes a 
want of trust in God. Only, we are sure that these are 
points which we must decide for ourselves ; the human 
will must be free, so far as other men are concerned. If 
we say, that we will implicitly trust others, then there is 
our decision, which no one could hav^ made for us, and 
which is our own choice as to the principle of our lives ; 
for which choice, we each of us, and no one else in all the 
world, must answer at the judgment-seat of God. Only, 
in that word there is our comfort, that, for our conduct in 
so doubtful a voyage as that of life, amidst so many con- 
flicting opinions, each courting our adherence to it, — 
amidst such a variety of circumstances without, and of 
feelings within, and on which, notwithstanding, our condi- 
tion for all eternity must depend, — we shall be judged, not 



310 WE MUST DECIDE FOR OURSELVES. 

by erring man, not by our own fallible conscience, but by 
the all-wise, and all-righteous God. With him, after all, 
even in the very courts of his holy Church, we yet, in one 
sense, must each of us live alone. On his gracious aid, 
given to our own individual souls, and determining our 
own individual wills, depends the character of our life 
here and for ever. Trusting to him, praying to him, we 
shall then make use of all the means that his goodness has 
provided for us ; we shall ask counsel of friends ; we shall 
listen to teachers ; we shall delight to be in the company 
of God's people, of one mind, and of one voice, with the 
good and wise of every generation ; we shall be afraid of 
leaning too much to our own understanding, knowing how 
it is encompassed with error ; but knowing that other men 
are encompassed with error also, and that we, and not 
they, must answer for our choice before Christ's judgment, 
we must, in the last resort, if our conscience and sense of 
truth cannot be persuaded that other men speak according 
to God's will, — we must follow our own inward convic- 
tions, though all the world were to follow the contrary. 



LECTURE XXXIII 



John ix. 29. 



We Jcnoic that God spaJce unto Moses; as for iliis fellow, we Tcnow not 
from tcJience Tie is. 

The questions involved in the conversations recorded in 
this chapter, are of great practical importance. Not per- 
haps of immediate practical importance to all in this pre- 
sent congregation ; but jet sure to be of importance to all 
hereafter, and of importance to many at this actual 
moment. Nay, they are of importance to those "vyho, 
from their youth, might be thought to have little to do 
-with them, either where the mind is already anxious and 
inquiring beyond its years, or where it happens to be ex- 
posed to strong party influences, or that its passions are 
likely to be engaged on a particular side, however little 
the understanding may be interested in the matter. In 
fact, in religious knowledge, as in other things, the omis- 
sions of youth are hard to make up in manhood; they who 
grow up with a very small knowledge of the Scriptures, 
and with no understanding of any of the questions con- 
nected with them, can with difficulty make up for this 
defect in after years ; they become, according to the in- 
fluences to which they may happen to be subjected, either 
unbelieving or fanatical. 

If we were to question the youngest boy about the lan- 
guage held in this chapter by the Pharisees, and by the 

(311) 



312 THE QUESTIONS STATED. 

man wlio had been born blind, we should, no doubt, be 
answered, that what the Pharisees said, was wrong ; and 
what the man born blind said, was right. This would be 
the answer which it would be thought proper to give ; 
because it would be perceived that the Pharisees' language 
expressed unbelief in Christ ; and that the man born blind 
was expressing gratitude and faith towards him. Nor, 
indeed, should we expect a young boy to go much farther 
than this ; for such general impressions are, at his age, as 
much many times as can be looked for. But it is strange 
to observe how much this want of understanding outlasts 
the age of boyhood ; how apt men are to judge according 
to names, and to see no farther : to say, that the language 
of the Pharisees was wrong, because they find it employed 
against Christ; but yet to use the very same language 
themselves, whilst they think that they are all the while 
speaking for Christ. 

But in this conversation between the Pharisees and the 
blind man, there are, indeed, as I said, points involved of 
very great importance ; it contains the question as to the 
degree of weight to be attached to miracles ; and the 
question, no less grave, with what degree of tenacity we 
should reject what claims to be a new truth, because it 
seems to be at a variance with supposed old truths to which 
we have been long accustomed to cling with undoubting 
affection. 

The question as to the weight of miracles is contained 
in the sixteenth verse. Some of the Pharisees said. This 
man is not of God, because he keepeth not the Sabbath 
day. Others said. How can a man that is a sinner do such 
miracles ? That is to say, the first party rejected the 
miracles because they seemed to be wrought in favour of a 
supposed false doctrine ; the other accepted the doctrine, 
because it seemed warranted to their belief by the miracles. 



ARGUMENT OF THE PHARISEES. 313 

The second question is contained in the words of the 
text, " We know that God spake to Moses ; as for this 
fellow, we know not from whence he is." We have been 
taught from our childhood, and have the belief associated 
with every good and pious thought in us, that God spake 
to Moses, and gave him the law as our rule of life ; but as 
for this fellow, we know not from whence he is. His works 
may be wonderful, his words may be specious ; but we 
never heard of him before, and we cannot tear up all the 
holiest feelings of our nature to receive a new doctrine. 
We will hold to the old way in which we were taught by 
our fathers to walk, and in which they walked before us. 

This last question is one which, as we well know, is 
continually presented to our minds. No one says, that the 
Pharisees were right, any more than those very Pharisees 
thought that their fathers were right who had killed the 
prophets. But as our Lord told them, that they were in 
truth the children in spirit of those who had killed the 
prophets ; because, although they had been taught to con- 
demn the outward form of their fathers' action, they were 
repeating it themselves in its principles and spirit ; so 
many of those who condemn the Pharisees are really their 
exact image, repeating now against the truths of their own 
days the very same arguments which the Pharisees used 
against the truths of theirs. 

For the arguments of these Pharisees, both as regards 
miracles, and as regards the suspicion with which we 
should look on a doctrine opposed to the settled opinions 
of our lives, have in fact, in both cases, a great mixture 
of justice in them ; and it is this very mixture which we 
may hope beguiled them ; and also beguiles those, who in 
our own days repeat their language. 

For most certain it is that the Scriptui'e itself supposes 
the possibility of false miracles. The case is especially 
27 



314 MIRACLES NOT ALWAYS DECISIVE: 

provided against in Deuteronomy. It there says, " If there 
arise among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and 
giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder 
come to pass whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us 
go after other gods which thou hast not known, and let us 
serve them : thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that 
prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God 
proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God 
with all your heart and with all your soul." Observe how 
nearly this comes to the language of the Pharisees, " This 
man is not of God, because he keepeth not the Sabbath 
day." "Here," they might have said, "is the very case 
foreseen in the Scriptures: a prophet has wrought a sign 
and a wonder, which is at the same time a breach of God's 
commandments. God has told us that such signs are not 
to be heeded, that he does but prove us with them to see 
whether we love him truly : knowing that where there is 
a love of him, the heart will heed no sign or wonder, how 
great soever, which would tempt it to think lightly of his 
commandments." Shall we say that this is not a just 
interpretation of the passage in Deuteronomy? shall we 
say that this is the language of unbelief or of sin ? or, 
rather, shall we not confess that it is in accordance with 
God's word, and holy, and faithful, and true ? And yet 
this most just language led those who used it to reject one 
of Christ's greatest miracles, and to refuse the salvation 
of the Holy One of God. Can God's truth be contrary to 
itself ? or can truth and goodness lead so directly to error 
and to evil ? 

Now, then, where is the solution to be found ? for some 
solution there must be, unless we will either condemn a 
most true principle, or defend a most false conclusion. 
The error lies in confounding God's moral law with his 



BUT DECISIVE AGAIXST POSITIVE LAWS. 315 

law of ordinances ; precisely the same error Tvhich led the 
Jews to stone Stephen. The law had undoubtedly com- 
manded that he who blasphemed God should be stoned ; 
the Jews called Stephen's speaking against the holy place 
and against the law blasphemy against God, and they 
murdered God's faithful servant and Christ's blessed 
martyr. Even so the law had said, Let no miracle be so 
great as to tempt you to forsake God : the Jews considered 
the forsaking the law of the Sabbath to be a forsaking of 
God, and they said that Christ's miracle was a work of 
Satan. There is no blasphemy into which Ave may not 
fall, no crime from which we shall be safe, if we do not 
separate in our minds most clearly such laws as relate to 
moral and eternal duties, and such as relate to outward or 
positive ordinances, even" when commanded or instituted 
by God himself. It is most false to say that the fact of 
their being commanded sets them on a level with each 
other. So long as they are commanded to us, it is no 
doubt our duty to obey them equally : but the difference 
between them is this, that whereas the first are commanded 
to us and to our children for ever, and no possible evidence 
can be so great as to persuade us that God has repealed 
them ; (for the utmost conceivable amount of external 
testimony, such as that of miracles, could only lead to 
madness ; — the human mind might, conceivably, be over- 
whelmed by the conflict, but should never and could never 
be tempted to renounce its very being, and lie against its 
Maker:) the others, that is, the commands to observe 
certain forms and ordinances, are in their nature essen- 
tially temporary and changeable : we have no right to 
assume that they will be continued, and therefore a 
miracle at any time might justly require us to forsake 
them ; and not only an outward miracle, but the changed 



316 THE ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEM. 

circumstances of the times may speak God's will no less 
clearly than a miracle, and may absolutely make it our 
duty to lay aside those ordinances, which to us hitherto, 
and to our fathers before us, were indeed the commands 
of God. 

Now let us take the other question, — which may indeed 
be called a question as to the allowableness of resting 
confidently in truth already gained, without consenting to 
examine the claims of something asserting itself to be a 
new truth, yet which seems to interfere with the old. Is 
nothing within us to be safe from possible doubt, or is 
everything ? Or is it here, as in the former case, that 
there are truths so tried and so sacred that it were blas- 
phemy to question them; while there are others, often 
closely intermixed with these, which are not so sacred, 
because they are not eternal ; which may and ought to be 
examined when occasion requires ; and which may be laid 
aside, or exchanged rather, for some higher truth, if it shall 
reasonably appear that their work is done, and that if we retain 
them longer they will change their character, and become 
no longer true but false. "David having served his own 
generation by the will of God, fell asleep, and was 
gathered unto his fathers, and saw corruption ; but He 
whom God raised again saw no corruption." This is the 
difference between positive ordinances and moral : the 
first serve their appointed number of generations by the 
will of God, and then are gathered to their fathers, and 
perish ; the latter are by the right hand of God exalted, 
the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. 

" We know, "said the Jews," that God spake to Moses ; 
but for this fellow, we know not from whence he is." 
There was a time when theu' fathers had held almost the 
very same language to Moses : " they refused him, saying, 



OXE TEMPORARY, THE OTHER ETERNAL. 317 

Who made tlice a ruler and a judge over us?" But now 
they knew that God had spoken to Moses, but were refus- 
insT Him who was sent unto them after Moses. God had 
spoken unto Moses, it was most true : he had spoken to 
him and given him commandments which were to last for 
ever ; and which Christ, so far from undoing, was sent to 
confirm and to perfect ; he had spoken to him other things, 
which were not to last for ever, but yet which were not to 
be cast away with dishonour ; but having, in the fulness of 
time, done theii' work, were then, like David, to fall asleep. 
All that was required of the Jews, was not to reject as 
blasphemy a doctrine which should distinguish between 
these two sorts of truths : which in no way requires to 
believe that God had not spoken to Moses, — which, on the 
contrary, maintained that he had so spoken, — but only 
contended that he has also, in these last days, spoken 
unto us by his Son ; and that his Son, bearing the full 
image of Divine authority, might well be believed if he 
spoke of some parts of Moses's law as having now ful- 
filled their work, seeing that they were such parts only as, 
by their very nature, were not eternal : they had not been 
from the beginning, and therefore they would not live on 
to the end. 

The practical conclusion is, that, whilst we hold fast, 
with an undoubting and unwavering faith, all truths which, 
by their very nature, are eternal, and to deny which is no 
other than to speak against the Holy Ghost, we should 
listen patiently to, and pass no harsh judgment on, those 
who question other truths not necessarily eternal, while 
they declare that they are, to the best of their consciences, 
seeking to obey God and Christ. When I say, that we 
should listen patiently, and not pass harsh judgments upon 
those who question such points, I say it without at all 
27* 



318 WE NEVER CAN CONFOUND THEM 

meanmo; that we should ao:rce with them. It would be 
monstrous indeed, to suppose that old opinions are never 
combated wrongly ; that old institutions are never pro- 
nounced to have lived out their appointed time, when, in 
fact, they are still in their full vigour. But the language 
of those who defend the doctrines and the ordinances of 
the Church may, and often does, partake of the sin of 
that of the Pharisees, even when those against whom they 
are contending, are not, like Christ, bringing in a new and 
higher truth, but an actual error. To point out that it is 
an error, to defend ourselves and the Church from it, is 
most right, and most highly our duty ; but it is neither 
right, nor our duty, but the very sin of the Pharisees, to 
put it down merely by saying, "As for this fellow, we 
know not from whence he is ;" to treat the whole question 
as an impiety, and to deny the virtues and the holiness of 
those who maintain it, because they are, as we call it, 
'' speaking blasphemous things against the holy place and 
against the law." The mischief of this to ourselves is in- 
finite; nay, in its extreme, it leads to language which is 
fearfully resembling the very blasphemy against the Holy 
Ghost ; for, when we say, as has been said, that where 
men's lives are apparently good and holy, and their doc- 
trines are against those of the Church, the holiness is an 
unreal holiness, and that we cannot see into their hearts, 
this is, in fact, denying the Holy Spirit's most infallible 
sign — the fruits of righteousness ; and being positive rather 
of the truth of the Church, than of the truth of God. 
There is nothing so certain as that goodness is from God ; 
nothing so certain as that sin is not from God ; nothing so 
certain as that sin is not from him. To deny, or doubt 
this, is to dispute the greatest assurance of truth that God 
hn.s ever been pleased to give to us. It does not, by any 



WITHOUT GREAT SIN. 319 

means, follow, that all good men are free from error, nor 
that error is less error because good men hold it ; but to 
make the error which is less certain, a reason for dis- 
puting the goodness which is more certain, is the spirit, 
not of God, nor of the Church of God, but of those false 
zealots who put an idol in God's place ; of such as rejected 
Christ and murdered Stephen. 



LECTURE XXXIV 



1 Corinthians xiv. 20. 

Brethren, he not children in understanding : howheit, in malice he ye 
children, hut in understanding he men. 

It would be going a great deal too far to say, that they 
who fulfilled the latter part of this command, were sure' 
also to fulfil the former ; that they who were men in un- 
derstanding, were, therefore, likely to be children in 
malice. But the converse holds good, with remarkable 
certainty, that they who are children in understanding, 
are proportionably apt to be men in malice : that is, in 
proportion as men neglect that which should be the guide 
of their lives, so are they left to the mastery of their 
passions ; and as nature and outward circumstances do not 
allow these passions to remain as quiet and as little grown 
as they are in childhood, — for they are sure to ripen with- 
out any trouble of ours, — so men are left with nothing 
but the evils of both ages, the vices of the man, and the 
unripeness and ignorance of the child. 

It is indeed a strange and almost incredible thing, that 
any should ever have united in their minds the notions of 
innocence and ignorance as applied to any but literal 
children : nor is it less strange, that any should ever have 
been afraid of their understanding, and should have 
sought goodness through prejudice, and blindness, and 
folly. Compared with this, their conduct was infinitely 

(320) 



ABUSE OF REASON SUICIDAL. 321 

reasoDablc "who weakened and tormented their bodies in 
order to strengthen, as they thought, their spiritual 
nature. Such conduct was, by comparison, reasonable 
because there is a great* deal of bodily weakness and dis- 
comfort, v/hich really does not interfere with the strength 
and purity of our character in itself, although, by abridg- 
ing our activity, it may lessen our means of usefulness. 
But what should we say of a man who directed his ill 
usage of his body to that part of our system which is 
most closely connected with the brain ; who were purpo- 
sely to impair his nervous system, and subject himself to 
those delusions and diseased views of things which are the 
well-knoAvn result of any disorder there ? Yet this is pre- 
cisely what they do who seek to mortify and lower their 
understanding. It is as impossible that they should be- 
come better men by such a process, as if they were literally to 
take medicines to affect their nerves or their brain, in the 
hope of becoming idiotic or delirious. It is, in fact, the 
worst kind of self-murder ; for it is a presumptuous de- 
stroying of that which is our best life, because we dread 
to undergo those trials which God has appointed for the 
perfecting both of it and of us. 

But from the wilful blindness of these men, let us turn 
to the Christian wisdom of the Apostle : "In malice be ye 
children, but in understanding be men." Let us turn to 
what is recorded of our Lord in his early life, at that age 
when, as man, the cultivation of his understanding was 
his particular duty — that he was found in the temple, 
sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and 
asking them questions : not asking questions only, as one 
too impatient or too vain to wait for an answer, or to con- 
sider it when he had received it ; not hearing only, as one 
careless and passive, who thinks that the words of wisdom 
can improve his mind by being indolently admitted 



322 OUR lokd's example. 

tlirougli the ears, ^yitli no more eifort than his body uses 
when it is refreshed by a cooling air, or when it is laid 
down in running water ; but both hearing and asking 
questions ; docile and patient, yet active and intelligent ; 
knowing that the wisdom was to be communicated from 
without, but that it belongs to the vigorous exercise of 
the power within, to apprehend it, and to convert it to 
noui'ishment. 

Now, what is recorded of our Lord for our example, as 
to the manner in which he received instruction when de- 
livered by word of mouth, this same thing should we do 
with that instruction, which, as is the case with most of 
ours, we derive from reading. Put the Scriptures in the 
place of those living teachers whom Christ was so eager to 
hear ; the words of Christ, and of his Spirit, instead of 
those far inferior guides from whom, notwithstanding, he, 
for our sakes, once submitted to learn ; and what can be 
more exact than the application of the example ? Let us 
be found in God's true temple, in the communion of his 
faithful people, — his universal Church, sitting down as it 
were, surrounded by the voices of the oracles of God — 
prophets, apostles, and Jesus Christ himself: let us be 
found with the record of these oracles in our hands, both 
reading them and asking them questions. 

It is quite clear that what hinders a true understanding 
of anything is vagueness ; and it is by this process of 
asking questions that vagueness is to be dispelled : for, in 
the first place, it removes one great vagueness, or indis- 
tinctness, which is very apt to beset the minds of many ; 
namely, the not clearly seeing whether they understand a 
thing or no ; and much more, the not seeing what it is 
that they do understand, and what it is which they do 
not. Take any one of oui' Lord's parables, and read it 
even to a young child : there will be something of an im- 



HEABIXG AXD ASKING QUESTIONS. 323 

pression conveyed, and some feelings a^vakened ; but all 
will be indistinct; tbe child -will not know whether he un- 
derstands or no, but will soon gain the habit of supposing 
that he does, as that is at once the least troublesome, and 
the least unpleasant to our vanity. And this same vague 
impression is often received by uneducated persons from 
reading or hearing either the Scriptures or sermons ; it is 
by no means the same as if they had read or heard some- 
thing in an unknown language ; but yet they can give no 
distinct account of what they have heard or read ; they do 
not know how far they understand it, and how far they do 
not. Here, then, is the use of "asking questions," — 
asking questions of ourselves or of our book, I mean, for 
I am supposing the case of our reading, when it can rarely 
happen that we have any living person at hand to give us 
an answer. Now, taking the earliest and simplest state 
of knowledge, it is plain that the first question to put to 
ourselves will be, '' Do I understand the meaning of all 
the words and expressions in what I have been reading ?" 
I know that this is taking things at their very beginning, 
but it is my wish to do so. Now, so plain and forcible is 
the English of our Bible, generally speaking, that the 
words difficult to be imderstood will probably not be 
many : yet some such do occur, owing, in some instances, 
to a change of the language ; as in the words " let," and 
"prevent," which now signify, the one, "to allow, or 
suffer to be done," and the other "to stop, or hinder," 
but which signified, when our translation was made, the 
first, "to stop or hinder," and the second, "to be before- 
hand with us ;" as in the prayer, "Prevent us, Lord, in 
all our doings, with thy most gracious favour;" the mean- 
ing is, "Let thy favour be with us beforehand, Lord, in 
whatever we are going to do." In other instances the 
words are difficult because they are used in a particular 



324 ASKING QUESTIONS OF THE LTELE. 

sense, such as we do not learn from our common language ; 
of which kind are the words "elect," "saints," "justifi- 
cation," "righteousness," and many others. Now, if we 
ask ourselves " whether we understand these words or no," 
our common sense, when thus questioned, will readily tell 
us, whether we do or not ; although if we had not directly 
asked the question, it might never have thought about it. 
Of course, our common sense cannot tell us what the true 
meaning is ; that is a matter of information, and our 
means of gaining information may be more or less ; but 
still, a great step is gained, the mist is partly cleared 
away ; we can say to ourselves, " Here is something which 
I do understand, and here is something which I do not ; 
I must keep the two distinct, for the first I may use, the 
second I cannot ; I will mark it down as a thing about 
which I may get explanation at another time ; but at pre- 
sent it is a blank in the picture, it is the same as if it 
were not there." This, then, is the first process of self- 
questioning, adapted, as I have already said, to those 
whose knoAvledge is most elementary. 

Suppose, however, that we are got beyond difficulties 
of this sort — that the words and particular expressions of 
the Scriptures are mostly clear to us. Now, take again 
one of our Lord's parables ; say, for instance, that of the 
labourers in the vineyard : we read it, and find that he who 
went to work at the eleventh hour received as much as he 
who had been working all the day. This seems to say, 
that he who begins to serve God in his old age shall receive 
his crown of glory no less than he who has served him all 
his life. But now try the process of self-questioning : 
what do I think that Christ means me to learn from this ? 
what is the lesson to me ? what is it to make me feel, or 
think, or do ? If it makes me think that I shall receive 
an equal crown of glory if I begin to serve God in my 



INSTANCE FROM THE PAEABLES. 325 

old age, and tlierefore if it leads me to live carelessly, this 
is clearly making Christ encourage wickedness ; and such 
a thought is blasphemy. He cannot mean me to learn 
this from it : let me look at the parable again. iWho is it 
who is reproved in those words which seem to contain its 
real object ? It is one who complains of God for having 
rewarded others equally with himself. Now this I can see 
is not a good feeling : it is pride and jealousy. In order, 
then to learn what the parable means me to learn, let me 
put myself in the position of those reproved in it. If I 
complain that others are rewarded by God as much as I 
am, it is altogether a bad feeling, and one which I ought 
to check ; for I have nothing to do with God's dealings to 
others, let me think of what concerns myself. Here I 
have the lesson of the parable complete : and here I find 
it is useful for me. But if I take it for a different object, 
and suppose that it means to encourage waiting till the 
eleventh hour — waiting till we are old before we repent — 
we find that we make it only actually to be mischievous to 
us. And thus we gain a great piece of knowledge : namely, 
that the parables of our Lord are mostly designed to teach 
some one particular lesson, with respect to some one par- 
ticular fault : and that if we take them generally, as if all 
in them was applicable to all persons, whether exposed to 
that particular fault or not, we shall absolutely be in dan- 
ger of deriving mischief from them instead of good. It is 
true, that in this particular parable, the gross wickedness 
of such an interpretation as I have mentioned is guarded 
ao-ainst even in the story itself; because those who worked 
only at the eleventh hour are expressly said to have stood 
idle so long only because no man had hired them ; their 
delay, therefore, was no fault of their own. But even if 
this circumstance had been left out, it would have been 
just the same ; because the genaral rule is, that we apply 
28 



326 IMPORTANCE OF USING COMMON LANGUAGE. 

to a parable only for its particular lesson, and do not 
strain it to any thing else. Had this been well understood, 
no one would have ever found so much difficulty in under- 
standing |)ie parable of the unjust steward. 

This is another great step towards the dispelling vague- 
ness, to apply the particular lesson of each part of Scrip- 
ture to that state of knowledge, or feeling, or practice in 
ourselves, which it was intended to benefit ; to apply it as 
a lesson to ourselves, not as a general truth for our neigh- 
bours. And the A^ery desire to do this, makes us naturally 
look with care to the object of every passage — to see to 
whom it was addressed, and on what occasion ; for this 
will often surely guide us to the point that we want. But 
in order to do this, we must strive to clothe the whole in 
our own common language ; to get rid of those expressions 
which to us convey the meaning faintly ; and to put it into 
such others as shall come most strongly home to us. This 
I have spoken of on other occasions ; and I have so often 
witnessed the bad effects of not doing so, that I am sure it 
may well bear to be noticed again ; I mean the putting 
such words as "persecution," "the cares and riches of the 
world," "the kingdom of God,", "confessing Christ," 
" denying Christ," and many others, into a language which 
to us has more lively reality, which makes us manifestly 
see that it is of us, and of our common life, and of our 
dangers, that the scripture is speaking, and not only of 
things in a remote time and country, and under circum- 
stances quite unlike our own. Therefore I have a strong 
objection to the use of what is called peculiarly religious 
language, because I am sure that it hinders us from bring- 
ing the matter of that language thoroughly home to us ; 
our minds do not entirely assimilate with it ; or if they 
fancy that they do, it is only by their becoming themselves 
affected, and losing their sense of the reality of things 



CONCLUSION. 827 

around them. For our language is fixed for us, and we 
cannot alter it ; and into that common language in which 
we think and feel, all truth must be translated, if we would 
think and feel respecting it at once rightlj, clearly, and 
vividly. Happy is he, who, by practising this early, has 
imbued his own natural language with the spirit of God's 
wisdom and holiness ; and who can see, and understand, 
and feel them the better, because they are so put into a 
form with which he is perfectly familiar. 

More might be said, very much more, but here I will 
now pause. In this world, wherein heavenly things are, 
after all, hard to seize and fix upon, we have great need 
that no mists of imperfect understanding darken them, 
over and above those of the corrupt will. To see them 
clearly, to understand them distinctly and vividly, may, 
indeed, after all be vain : a thicker veil may yet remain 
behind, and we may see and understand, and yet perish. 
Only the clear sight of God in Christ can be no light 
blessing ; and there may be a hope, that understanding 
and approving with all our minds his excellent wisdom, the 
light may warm us as well as assist our sight ; that we may 
see, and not in our vague and empty sense, but in the 
forc^ of the scriptural meaning of the word, — may see, 
and so believe. 



LECTURE XXXV 



Matthew xxvi. 45, 46. 

Sleep on noio and take your rest ; heliold, the hour is at hand, and the 
Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners, Bise, let us be 
going ; behold, he is at hand that doth betray me. 

I TAKE ttese verses for my text, in the first place, 
because some liave fancied a difficulty in them, and have 
even proposed to alter the translation, and read the first 
words as a question, "Do ye still sleep and take your 
rest ?" and because they are really a very good illustration 
of our Lord's manner of speaking, a manner which it is of 
the highest importance to us fully to understand. And, 
secondly, I take them as a text for the general lesson 
which they convey to us ; their mixture of condemnation 
and mercy ; their view, at once looking backwards and 
forwards, not losing sight of irreparable evils of a neglected 
past, nor yet making those evils worse by so dwelling upon 
them as to forget the still available future ; not concealing 
from us the solemn truth, that what is done cannot be 
undone, yet warning us also not to undo by a vain des- 
pair that future which may yet be done to our soul's 
health. 

First, a difficulty has been fancied to exist in the words, 
as if our Lord had bade his disciples to do two contra- 
dictory things: telling them, first, to sleep on and take 
their rest, and then saying, " Rise, let us be going." 

(328) 



DIFFICULTIKS AKE NOT TO BE REMOVED 329 

And because in St. Luke's account, when our Lord comes 
to his disciples the last time, his words are given thus, 
" Why sleep ye ? rise and pray, that ye enter not into 
temptation :" therefore, as I have said, his words in the 
text have been translated, " Are ye sleeping and resting 
for the remainder of the time?" Now, I should not take 
up your time with things of this sort, where I believe our 
common translation to be most certainly right, were it not 
for the sake of one or two general remarks, which I think 
may not be out of place. It is a general rule, that in 
passages not obscure, but appearing to contain some moral 
difficulty, if I may so speak ; that is, something which 
seems inconsistent with our notions of God's holiness, or 
wisdom, or justice ; something, in short, of a stumbling- 
block, which we fear may occasion a triumph to unbeliev- 
ers ; it is a rule, I say, that in passages of this kind the 
difficulty is not to be met by departing from the common- 
received translation. And the reason of this is plain ; that 
had not the commonly received translation in such cases 
been clearly the right one, it would never have come to be 
commonly received. Amongst the thousands of inter- 
preters of Scripture, all, from the earliest time, anxious to 
remove grounds of cavil from the adversaries of their 
faith, a passage would never have been translated so as to 
afford such a ground, if the right translation of it could 
have been different. Such places are especially those in 
which the common translation needs not to be suspected : 
and it is merely leading us astray from the true explanation 
of the apparent difficulty, when vre thus attempt to evade 
it by tampering with the translation. A notable instance 
of this was afforded some few years since in a new trans- 
lation of some of the books of the Old Testament ; in 
which it was pretended that most of those points which had 
been most attacked by unbelievers were, in fact, mere 
28* 



380 BY ALTERING THE COMMON TRANSLATION. 

mistranslations, and that the real meaning of the original 
was something totally different ; and, in order to show the 
necessity of his alterations, the wi'iter entirely allowed the 
objections of unbelievers to the common reading; and 
said, that no sufficient answer had been or could be made 
to them. This was an extreme case, and probably 
imposed only on a very few: but less instances of the 
same thing are common : St. Paul's words about being 
baptized for the dead, have been twisted to all sorts of 
senses, from their natural and only possible meaning, 
because men could not bear to believe that the superstition 
of being baptized as proxies for another could have existed 
at a period which they were resolved to consider so pure : 
and so in the text, a force has been put upon the words 
which they cannot bear, in order to remove a supposed 
contradiction : and all that would have been gained by 
the change would be, to have one instructive illustration 
the less of our Lord's peculiar manner of discourse, and 
one instance the less of the inimitable way in which his 
language, addressed directly to the circumstances before 
him, contains, at the same time, a general lesson, for the 
use of all his disciples in all ages. 

Our Lord's habitual language was parabolical ; I use 
the word in a wide sense, to include all language which is 
not meant to be taken according to the letter. Observe 
his conversation with the Samaritan woman; it begins at 
once with parable, " If thou hadst known who it was that 
asked of thee, saying, Give me to drink, thou wouldst have 
asked of him, and he would have given thee living water." 
And again, " Whoso drinketh of the water that I shall 
give him shall never thirst, but it shall be in him a well of 
water, springing up unto life eternal." This seems to 
have been, if I may venture to say so, the favourite lan- 
guage in which he preferred to speak ; but when he found 



OUR lord's language parabolical. 331 

that he ^Yas not understood, then, according to the nature 
of the case, he went on in two or three dij0ferent manners. 
When he, to whom all hearts were open, saw that the mis- 
understanding was wilful, that it arose out of a disposition 
glad to find an excuse, in his pretended obscurity, for not 
listening to him and obeying him, then, instead of explain- 
ing his language, he made it more and more figurative ; 
more likely to be misunderstood, or to ofi'end those whom 
he knew to be disposed beforehand to misunderstand and 
to be ofiended. A famous example of this may be seen 
in the sixth chapter of St. John ; there he first calls him- 
self the Bread of Life, and says, that whosoever should 
eat of that bread should live for ever : but when he found 
that the Jews cavilled at this language, instead of explain- 
ing it, he only added expressions yet more strongly para- 
bolical ;" " Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and 
drink his blood, ye have no life in you :" and he dwells on 
this image so long, that we find that many of his disciples, 
bent on interpreting it literally, and, in this sense, finding 
it utterly shocking, went back and walked no more with 
him. Again, when he found not a disposition to cavil, but 
yet a profound ignorance of his meaning, arising from a 
state of mind wholly unused to think of spiritual good and 
evil, he neither used, as to those who wilfully misunder- 
stood him, language that would ofiend them still more, nor 
yet did he offer a direct explanation ; but he broke ofi" the 
conversation, and adopted another method of instruction. 
Thus, when the Samaritan woman, thinking only of bodily 
wants, answered him by saying, '' Sir, give me this water, 
that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw," he neither 
goes on to speak to her in the same language, nor yet 
does he explain it ; but at once addresses her in a difterent 
manner, saying, " Go, call thy husband, and come hither." 
Thirdly, when he was speaking to his own disciples, to 



332 EXAMPLES give:t. 

whom It was given to know the m3^sterles of the kingdom 
of God, he generally explained his meaning, — at least so 
far as to prevent practical error, — when he found that they 
had not understood him. Thus, when he had said to them, 
"Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven 
of Herod," and they thought only of leaven and of bread 
in the literal sense, he upbraids them, indeed, for their 
slowness, saying, "Are ye also yet without understand- 
ing?" but he goes on to tell them in express terms that 
he did not mean to speak to them of the leaven of bread. 
And the words of the text are an exactly similar instance : 
his first address is parabolical ; that is, it is not meant to 
be taken to the letter ; " Sleep on now, and take your 
rest," meaning, " Ye can now do me no good by watching, 
for the time is past, and he who betrayed me is at hand ; 
ye might as well sleep on now and take your rest, for I 
need not try you any longer." But, as the time was really 
pressing, and there was a possibility that they might have 
misunderstood his words, and have really continued to 
sleep, he immediately added in different language, " Rise, 
let us be going ; behold, he is at hand that doth betray 
me." We must be prepared, then, to find that our Lord's 
language, not only to the Jews at large, but even to his 
own disciples, is commonly parabolical ; the worst inter- 
pretation which we can give to it is commonly the literal 
one. His conversation with his disciples, just before he 
went out to the garden of Gethsemane, as recorded in the 
thirteenth and following chapters of St. John, is a most 
striking proof of this. If any one looks through them, he 
will find how many are the comparisons, and figurative 
manners of speaking, which abound in them, and how often 
his disciples were at a loss to understand his m.eaning. And 
he himself declares this, for, at the end of the sixteenth 
chapter, he says expressly, " These things I have spoken 



WHEN DID CHRIST SPEAK LITERALLY? 333 

unto jou in proverbs ;" — that is, language not to be taken 
according to the letter ; — " the time is coming when I will 
no more speak unto you in proverbs, but will show you 
plainly of the Father." And then, when he goes on to 
declare, what he never, it seems, had before told them in 
such express and literal language, " I came forth from the 
Father, and am come into the world : again I leave the 
world, and go to my Father," his disciples seem to have 
welcomed with joy this departure from his usual manner 
of speaking, and said immediately, " Lo ! now speakest 
thou plainly, and speakest no proverb : now we know that 
thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man 
should ask thee : by this we believe that thou camest forth 
from God." 

But let us observe what it is that he said : "A time is 
coming when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, 
but shall show you plainly of the Father." That time 
came immediately. He spoke to them after his resurrec- 
tion, opening their understandings to understand the 
Scriptures : he spoke yet more fully, by his Spirit, after 
the day of Pentecost, leading them into all truth. And 
what they thus heard in the ear, they proclaimed, accord- 
ing to his bidding, upon the house-tops. When the Holy 
Spirit brought to their remembrance all that he had said 
to them, and gave their minds a spiritual judgment, to 
compare what they thus had brought before them, to see 
his words in their true light and their true bearings, com- 
paring spiritual things with spiritual, they were no niggards 
of this heavenly treasure ; nor did they, according to the 
vain heresy of the worst corrupters of Christ's gospel, 
imitate and surpass that sin which they had so heavily 
judged in Ananias. They kept back no part of that which 
they professed and were commanded to lay wholly and 
entirely at the feet of God's church. They did not so lie 



334 MORAL LESSON OF OUR LORD's WORDS. 

to the Holy Ghost, as to erect a "vvicked system of priest- 
craft in the place of that holy gospel of which they were 
ministers. They had no reserve of a secret doctrine for 
themselves and a chosen few, keeping in their own hands 
the key of knowledge, and opening only half of the door; 
but as they had freely received, so they freely gave ; all 
that they knew, they taught to all : and so, through their 
blessed teaching, we too can understand our Lord's words 
as they were taught to understand them : and what is 
parabolical, is no longer on that account obscure, but full 
of light and of beauty, fulfilling the end for which it was 
chosen, the most effective of all ways of teaching, because 
the liveliest. ■ 

I have left myself but little space to touch upon the 
second part of the subject — the general lesson conveyed 
in our Lord's words to his disciples : " Sleep on now, and 
take your rest. — Rise ; let us be going." How truly do 
we deserve the reproof; how thankfully may we accept 
the call. We have forfeited many opportunities which we 
would in vain recover ; we have been careless when we 
should have been watchful ; and that for which we should 
have watched, is now lost by our neglect ; and it is no good 
to watch for it any more. Let us remember this, while it 
is called to-day ; for how often is it particularly applicable 
to us here, from the passing nature of your stay amongst 
us ! To both you and us too often belongs our Lord's 
remonstrance, " What, could ye not watch with me one 
hour ?" So short a time as you stay here, could we not 
be watching with Christ that little period : from which, if 
well improved, there might spring forth a fruit so lasting? 
But, alas ! we too often sleep it away : we do not all that 
we might do, nor do you ; evil grows instead of good, till 
the time is past, and you leave us ; and we may as well 
sleep on, and take our rest, so far as all that particular 



THE PAST LOST, NOT THE FUTURE. 335 

good was concerned — the improvement, namely, of your 
time at this place, for which we are alike set to watch. 
But are we to take the words of reproach literally ? May 
we really sleep on, and take our rest ? Oh vain and wilful 
folly, so to misunderstand ! But, lest we should misunder- 
stand, let us hear our Lord's next words : " Rise ; let us 
be going," and that instantly : the time and opportunity 
already lost for ever is far more than enough. — "Rise; 
let us be going :" so Christ calls us ; for he has still other 
work for us to do, for him, and with him. The future is 
yet our own, though the past be lost. We have sinned 
greatly and irreparably ; but let us not do so yet again : 
other opportunities are afforded us ; the disciples would 
not watch with him in the garden, but he calls them to go 
with him to his trial and his judgment ; and one, we know, 
watched by him even on his cross : — so he calls to us ; so 
he calls now ; but he will not so call for ever. There will 
be a time when we might strike out the words, " Rise ; let 
us be going;" they will concern us then no more. It is 
only said, " Sleep on now, and take your rest : all your 
watching time has been wasted, and you can now watch no 
more;" there remains only to sleep — to sleep that last 
sleep, from which we shall then never wake to God and 
happiness, but in which we shall be awake for ever to sin 
and to misery. 



LECTURE XXXVI 



2 Corinthians v. 17, 18 



Old things are passed aioay ; hcliold, all tilings are hecome neio : and 
all things are of God, ivho hath reconciled us to himself hy Jesus 
Christ. 

I HAVE, from time to time, spoken of that foolish 
misuse of the Scriptures, by which any one opening the 
volume of the Bible at random, and taking the first words 
which he finds, straightway applies them either to himself 
or to his neighbour ; and then boasts that he has the word 
of God on his side, and that whosoever difi'ers from him, 
is disputing and despising the word of God. The most 
extreme instances of this way of proceeding are so 
absurd, that they could not be noticed in this place 
becomingly; and these, of course, stand palpable to all, 
except to those who have allowed themselves to fall into 
them. But far short of these manifest follies, great 
errors have been maintained on general points, and great 
mistakes, whether of over presumption or of over fear, 
have been committed as to men's particular state, by 
quoting Scripture unadvisedly; by taking hold of its 
words to the neglect or actual violation of its spirit and 
real meaning. This is a great and a very common 
mischief, but yet there is a truth at the bottom of the 
error ; it is true, that the greatest questions relating to 
God and to ourselves, may find their answer in the Scrip- 

(336) 



PERVERSE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE, 337 

tures ; it is true, that if we scarcli for this answer wisely 
we may surely find it. 

Cofisider the words of the text, and see how easily they 
may be perverted, if with no more ado we take them, as 
said of ourselves, each individually, and as containing to 
each of us a statement positive of truth. " Old things 
are passed away; behold, all things are become new." If 
we believe that this is God's word respecting each of us, 
what violence must we do to our memory of the past, and 
our consciousness of the present, if we do try to persuade 
ourselves that so total a change has taken place in each 
of us, that what we once were, we are no longer; that 
what we are, we once were not ; and this not in some few 
particular points, but in the main character of our minds. 
Again, "All things are of God, who hath reconciled us to 
himself by Jesus Christ." If we apply these words to 
each of us, what exceeding presumption w^ould they 
breed ! If all things in us and about us are now of God, 
what room can there be for sin ? If God hath reconciled 
us to himself by Jesus Christ, what room can there be for 
fear or for danger ? And thus, w^hile we say we are 
quoting and believing the word of God, we do in fact 
turn it into a lie ; we make it assert a falsehood as to our 
past state, and a falsehood as to our future state ; we 
make it say, that our old nature is passed away, vfhen it is 
not ; that we have got a new nature when we have not ; 
that we are reconciled to God, and therefore in safety, 
when w^e are, in fact, in the extremest danger. 

But it is easy to see that we have no right to apply to 
ourselves words written by St. Paul eighteen hundred 
years ago, and applied by him to other persons. I go, 
then, farther; and I say, that if every member of the 
church of Corinth, to which they were written, had 
applied them to himself in the manner which I have shown 
29 



338 AND ALSO OF THE LITURGY. 

above, tlie words would in many instances have been per- 
verted no less, and would li.ive been made to state what 
was false, and not what was triie. And the same may be 
said of many other passages of St. Paul's Epistles, which, 
having been similarly misinterpreted, have furnished matter 
for endless controversies, and on which opposite theories 
of doctrine have been fondly raised, each of them alike un- 
christian and untrue. 

Thus our present position is this : — that oftentimes by 
taking the representations of Scripture as true in fact, 
whether of ourselves or of others, we come to conclusions 
at once false and mischievous ; being, as the case may be, 
either presumptuous, or fearful, or uncharitable, and 
claiming for each of these faults the sanction of the word 
of God. 

A similar mistake in interpreting human compositions, 
has led to faults of another kind. Assuming as before, in 
interpreting St. Paul's words, that the language of our 
Liturgy is meant to describe, as a matter of fact, the 
actual feelings and condition of those who use it, or for 
whom it is used ; and seeing manifestly that these feelings 
and condition do not agree with the words; v^e do not 
here, as with the Scripture, do violence to our common 
sense and conscience, by insisting upon it that we agree 
with the words, but we find fault with the words c.s being 
at variance with the matter of fact. Some say that the 
language of the General Confession is too strong a state- 
ment of sin ; that the language of the Co'mmunion 
Service, of the Baptismal Service, and above ali, of the 
Burial Service, is too full of encouragement and of assur- 
ance ; that men are not all so bad as to require zhe one, 
nor so good as to deserve the other ; that in both cases it 
should be lowered, to agree with the actual condition of 
those who use it. 



TRUE SENSE OF ST. PAUL'S WORDS. 339 

Now it is worthy of notice, at any rate, that the self- 
same r lie of interpretation applied to the Scripture and 
the Liiurgy is found to suit with neither. We adhere 
positively to our rule : and thus, as we hold the words of 
Scripture sacred, we force common sense and conscience 
to make the facts agree with them; but not having the 
same respect for the words of the Liturgy, we complain 
of them as faulty and requiring alteration, because they 
do not agree with the facts. 

I will not enter into the question whether the Liturgy 
has done wisely or not in thus imitating the Scripture ; but 
I do contend that, in point of fact, there is this resem- 
blance between them. St. Paul's Epistles, in particular, 
although it is true of other parts of the Scripture also, 
contain, as does the Liturgy of our Church, a great many 
passages which, if taken either universally or even gene- 
rally as containing a matter of fact, will lead us into 
certain error. Is it, therefore, so very certain that we do 
wisely in so interpreting them? 

With regard to our Liturgy I need not follow up the 
question now ; but with regard to St. Paul, it is certain 
that he, in many parts of his Epistles, chooses to repre- 
sent that which ought to be as that which actually was : 
he chooses to regard those to whom he is writing as being 
in all respects true Christians, as being worthy of their 
privileges, as answering to what God had done to them, as 
forming a church really inhabited by the Holy Spirit, and 
therefore being a true and living body of due proportions 
to Christ its Divine head. Nor does he trust exclusively 
to the common sense and conscience of those to whom he 
was writing to interpret his language correctly. He 
might Lave thought indeed that if he wrote to them as re- 
deemed, justified, sanctified, as having all things new, as 
being the children of God, and the heirs of God, and the 



340 WHY HE USED SUCH LANGUAGE. 

temples of tlie Holy Ghost, any individual who felt that 
he was none of these things, that sin was still mighty 
within him, and that he was sin's slave, would neither 
deny his own conscience, nor yet call St. Paul a deceiver ; 
but would read in the difference between St. Paul's descrip- 
tion of him and the reality, the exact measure of his own 
sin, and need of repentance and watchfulness. But he 
does not rely on this only : he notices sins as actually ex- 
isting ; he mingles the language of reproof and of anxiety, 
so as to make it quite clear that he did not mean his de- 
scriptions of their holiness and blessedness to apply to 
them all necessarily ; he knew full well that they did not : 
but yet he knew also that, considering what God had done 
for them, it was monstrous that they should not be truly 
applicable. 

But why then, you will say, did he use such language ? 
why did he call men forgiven, redeemed, saved, justified, 
sanctified ? — he uses all these terms often as applicable 
generally to those to whom he was writing ; — why did he 
call them so, when in fact they were not so ? He called 
them so for the same reason which made prophecy foretell 
blessings upon Israel of old, and on the Christian church 
afterwards, which were fulfilled on neither : — in order to 
declare, and keep ever before us, what God has done and 
is willing to do for us : what he fain would do for us, if we 
would but suffer him ; what divine powers are offered to us, 
and we will not use them ; what divine happiness is de- 
signed for us, and we will not enter into it. Let us'ponder 
all the magnificence of the scriptural language, — the 
words of the text for example, not as describing what we 
are when we are full of sin ; nor yet as mere exaggerated 
language, which must be brought down to the level of our 
present reality. Let us consider it as containing the words 



ITS USES TO OURSELVES. 341 

of truth and soberness ; not one jot or one tittle needs to 
be abated ; it must not be lowered to us, but we rather 
raised to it. It is a truth, it is the word of God, it is the 
seal of our assurance : it is that which good men of old 
would have welcomed with the deepest joj ; which to good 
men now is a source of comfort unspeakable. For it tells 
us that God has done for us, is doing, will do, all that we 
need ; it tells us that the price of our redemption has been 
paid, the kingdom of heaven has been set open, the power 
to walk as God's children has been given : that so far as 
God is concerned we are redeemed, we are saved, we are 
sanctified ; it is but our own fault merely that we are not 
all of these actually and surely. 

This is not a little matter to be persuaded of; if it be 
true, as I fear it is, that too many of us do not love God, 
is it not quite as true that we cannot believe that God 
loves us ? Have we any thing like a distinct sense of the 
words of St. John, ^' We love God because he first loved 
us ?" V/e believe in the love of our earthly friends ; 
those who have so lately left their homes have no manner 
of doubt that their parents are interested in their welfare, 
though absent ; that they will often think of them ; and 
that, as far as it is possible at a distance from them, they 
are watching over their good, and anxious to promote it. 
The very name home implies all this ; it implies that it is 
a place where those live who love us ; and I do not ques- 
tion that the consciousness of possessing this love does, 
amidst all your faults and forgetfulnesses, rise not unfre- 
quently within your minds, and restrain you from making 
yourselves altogether unworthy of it. Now, I say, that the 
words of the text, and ^hundreds of similar passages, are 
our ass\n^ance, if we would but believe them, that we have 
another home and another parent, by whom we are loved 
29* 



342 USE OF THE ASSURANCE OF GOD'S LOVE, 

constantly and earnestly, who has done far more for us 
than our earthly parents can do. I grant that it is hard 
to believe this really ; so infinite is the distance between 
God and us, that we cannot fancy that he cares for us ; he 
may make laws for a world, or for a system, but what can 
he think or feel for us ? It is, indeed, a thought absolutely 
overpowering to the mind ; it may well seem incredible to 
us, judging either from our own littleness or our own for- 
getfulness ; so hard as we find it to think enough of those 
to whom we are most nearly bound, how can the Most 
High God think of us ? But if there be any one particle 
of truth in Christianity, we are warranted in saying that 
God does love ' us ; strange as it may seem. He, whom 
neither word nor thought of created being can compass ; 
He, who made us and ten thousand worlds, loves each one 
of us individually; "the very hairs of our heads are all 
numbered." He so loved us, that he gave his only- 
begotten Son to die for us; and St. Paul well asks, 
" He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up 
for us all, will he not also with him freely give us all 
things?" 

Believe me, you could have no better charm to keep you 
safe through the temptations of the coming half year, than 
this most true persuasion that God loves you. The oldest 
and the youngest of us may alike repeat to himself the 
blessed words, " God loves me ;" " God loves me ; God has 
redeemed me : God would dwell in my heart, that I might 
dwell in him : God has placed me in his church, has made 
me a member of Christ his own Son, has made me an 
inheritor of the kingdom of heaven." I might multiply 
words, but that one little sentenq^ is, perhaps, more than 
all, " God loves me." Oh that you would believe him 
when he assures you of it, for then surely you would not 



IF WE WOULD BUT BELIEVE IT. 343 

fail to love him. But whether you believe it or not, still it 
is so : God loves every one of us ; he loves each one of us 
as belonging to Christ his Son. He does love each of us ; 
let us not cast his love away from us, and refuse to love 
him in return ; he does love each of us now, but there may 
be a time to each of us, — there will be, assuredly, if we 
will not believe that he loves us, when he will love us no 
more for ever. 



LECTURE XXXVII 



EZEKIEL XX. 49. 



I 



Then said /, Ah, Lord God ! they say of me, Doth he not speak 
parables ? 

Nothing is more disheartening, if we must believe it to 
be true, than the language in which some persons talk of 
the difficulty of the Scriptures, and the absolute cer- 
tainty that different men will ever continue to understand 
them differently. It is not, we are told, with the know- 
ledge of Scripture as with that of outward nature : in the 
knowledge of nature, discoveries are from time to time 
made which set error on the one side, and truth on the 
other, absolutely beyond dispute ; there the ground when 
gained is clearly seen to be so ; and as fresh sources of 
knowledge are continually opening to us, it is not beyond 
hope that we may in time arrive infinitely near to the 
enjoyment of truth, — truth certain in itself, and acknow- 
ledged by all unanimously. But with Scripture, it is said, 
the case is far otherwise ; discoveries are not to be expected 
here, nor does a later generation derive from its additional 
experience any greater insight into the things of God than 
was enjoyed by the generations before it. And when we 
see that actually the complete Scriptures have been in the 
world not much less than eighteen hundred years ; that 
within that period no other book has been so much stuflied ; 
and yet that differences of opinion as to the matters spoken 

(344) 



CA^:^^0T scRiPTurvE be certainly kxown? 345 

of in it have ever existed, and exist now as much as ever, what 
reasonable prospect is there, it is asked, of future harmony 
or of clearer demonstrations of divine truth ; and will not 
the good on these points ever continue to differ from the 
good, and the wise to differ from the wise ? 

This language, so discouraging as it is, may be heard 
from two very opposite parties, so that their agreement 
may appear to give it the more weight : it is used by men 
who are indifferent to religious truth, as an excuse for their 
taking no pains to discover what the truth really is ; it is 
echoed back quite as strongly by another set of persons 
who wish to magnify the uncertainties of the Sci'ipture in 
order to recommend more plausibly the guidance of some 
supposed authoritative interpreter of it. But yet it ought 
to be at any rate a painful work to any serious mind to be 
obliged to dwell not only on the obscurities of God's word, 
but on its perpetual and invincible obscurities ; and, 
though an interpreter may be necessary if we know not 
the language of those with whom we are conversing, yet 
how much better would it be that we should ourselves know 
it : nay, and if we are told that we cannot know it, that 
our best endeavours will be unable to master it, the suspicion 
ine-s^tably arises in our minds, that our pretended interpreter 
may be ignorant of it also ; that he is not in truth better 
acquainted with it than we, but only more presumptuous or 
more dishonest. 

Still a statement may be painful, but at the same time 
true. There is imdoubtedly something in such language 
as I have been alluding to, which appears to be confirmed 
by experience. There is no denying the fact, that the 
Scriptures have been a long time in the world ; that they 
have been very generally and carefully read ; and yet 
that men do differ exceedingly as to religious truth, and 
these di^erences do not seem to be tending towards 



346 CASE OF AXCIEXT PB.OFAXE LITERATURE. 

agreement. It seems to me, therefore, desirable that 
every student of the Scriptures should know, as well as 
may be, what the exact state of the question is; for if 
tlie subject of his studies is really so hopelessly uncertain, 
it is scarcely possible that his zeal in studying it should 
not be abated ; nay, could we wisely encourage him to 
bestow his pains on a hopeless labour ? 

Now, in the very outset, there is this consideration 
which many of us here are well able to appreciate. We 
read many books written in dead languages, most of them 
more ancient than any part of the New Testament, some 
of them older than several of the books of the Old. We 
know well enough that these ancient books are not v*"ithout 
their difficulties ; that time, and thought, and knowledge 
are required to master them ; but still we do not doubt 
that, with the exception of particular passages here and 
there, the true meaning of these books may be discovered 
with undoubted certainty. We know, too, that this cer- 
tainty has increased ; that interpretations, vrhich were 
maintained some years ago, have been set aside by our 
improved knowledge of the languages and condition of the 
ancient world, quite as certainly as old errors in physical 
science have been laid to rest by later discoveries. 
Farther, our improved knowledge has taught us to distin- 
guish what may be known from what may be probably 
concluded, and vrhat is probable from what can merely be 
guessed at. When we come to points of this last sort, to 
passages which cannot be interpreted or understood, we 
leave them at once as a blank; but v>'e enjoy no less, and 
understand with no less certainty, the greatest portions of 
the book which contain them. And this experience, with 
regard to the vrorks of heathen antiquity, makes it a 
startling proposition at the very outset, when we are told 



CHRISTIAN DIFFERENCES NOT CAUSED BY SCRIPTURE. 347 

that vritli the Vforks of Christian antiquity the case i3 
otherwise. 

We thus approach the statement as to the hopless diffi- 
culty of Scripture, confirmed, as we are told it is, by the 
actual fact of the great disagreements amiong Christians, 
with a well-grounded mistrust of its soundness ; we feel 
sure that there is something in it which is confused or so- 
phistical. And considering the fact which appears to con- 
firm it, I mean the actual differences between Christians 
and Christians, it soon appears by no means to bear out 
its supposed conclusion. For the differences between 
Christians and Christians by no means arise generally 
from the difficulty of understanding the Scripture aright, 
but from disagreement as to some other point, quite inde- 
pendent of the interpretation of the Scriptures. For ex- 
ample, the great questions at issue between us and the 
K-oman Catholics turn upon two points, — Whether there is 
not another authority, in matters of Christianity, distinct 
from and equal to the Scriptures, — and whether certain 
interpretations of Scripture are not to be received as true, 
for the sake of the authority of the interpreter. Now, 
suppose for a moment, that the works of Plato or Aris- 
totle were to us in the place of the Scriptures; and that 
the question was, whether these works of theirs could be 
understood with certainty ; it would prove nothing against 
our being able to understand them, if, whilst we look to 
them alone, another man were to say, that, to his judg- 
ment, the works of other philosophers were no less autho- 
ritative ; or, if he were to insist upon it, that the interpre- 
tations given by the scholiasts were always sure to be cor- 
rect, because the scholiasts were the authorized interpreters 
of the text. No doubt our philosophical opinions and our 
practice might differ widely from such a man's ; but the 
difference would prove nothing as to the obscurity of 



S48 WHY MEX ARE TEMPTED 

Plato's or Aristotle's text, because another standard had 
been brought in, distinct from their works, and from the 
acknowledged principles of interpretation, and thus led 
unavoidably to a different result. 

The same also is the case as to the questions at issue 
between the Church of England and many of the Dissent- 
ers. In these disputes it is notorious that the practice 
and authority of the church are continually appealed to, 
or, it may be, considerations of another kind, as to the 
inherent reasonableness of a doctrine ; all which are, 
again, a distinct matter from the interpretation of Scrip- 
ture. One of the greatest men of our time has declared, 
that, in the early part of his life, he did not believe in the 
divinity of our Lord ; but he has stated expressly, that he 
never for a moment persuaded himself that St. Paul or St. 
John did not believe it ; their language he thought was 
clear enough upon the point ; but the notion appeared to 
him so unreasonable in itself, that he disbelieved it in spite 
of their authority. It is manifest, that, in this case, great 
as the difference was between this great man's early belief 
and his later, yet it in no way arose from the obscurity of 
the Scripture. The language of the Scripture was as 
clear to him at first as it was afterwards ; but in his early 
life he disbelieved it, while, in his latter life, he embraced 
it with all his heart and soul. 

It must not be denied, however, that we are here 
arrived at one of the causes which are likely, for a long 
time, to keep alive a false interpretation of Scripture, and 
which do not affect our interpretation of heathen writings. 
For most men, in such a case as I have referred to, when 
they do not believe the language of the Scripture, but 
wish to alter it, whether by omission or addition, do not 
deal so fairly with it as that great man did to whom I 
have alluded. They have neither his knowledge nor his 



TO MISINTEKPRET SCRIPTURE. 349 

honesty; a false interpretation is more easily disguised 
from them, owing to their ignorance, and they let their 
wishes more readily warp their judgment. Thus, they 
will not say as he did, ^' The Scripture clearly says so and 
so, but I cannot believe it;" they rather say, "This is 
very unreasonable and shocking, the Scripture cannot 
mean to say this ;" or, " This is very pious and very 
ancient, the Scripture cannot but sanction this." And^ 
certainly, if men will so deal with it, there remains no 
certainty of interpretation then. But this is not the way 
that we deal with other ancient writings ; and its unfair- 
ness and foolishness, if ever attempted to be practised 
there, are so palpable as to be ridiculous. No doubt it is 
difficult to convince men against their will ; nevertheless, 
there is a good hope, that, as sound principles of interpre- 
tation are more generally known, they will put to shame 
a flagrant departure from them ; and that those who try 
to make the Scripture say more or less than it has said, 
will be gradually driven to confess that Scripture is not 
their real authority ; that their own notions in the one 
case, and the authority of the Church in the other case, 
have been the real grounds of their belief, to which they 
strove to make the Scriptures conform. 

Nothing that I have said is, in any degree, meant to 
countenance the opinions of those who talk of the Bible, — 
or rather, our translation of it, — being its own interpre- 
ter ; meaning, that if you give a Bible to any one who 
can read, he will be able to understand it rightly. Even 
in this extravagance, there is indeed something of a 
truth. If a man were so to read the Bible, much he 
would, unquestionably, be able to understand; enough, I 
well believe, if honestly and devoutly used, to give him, 
if living in a desert island by himself, the knowledge of 
salvation. But when we talk of understanding the Bible, 
30 



350 EARNEST STUDY LEADS TO A 

SO as to be guided by it amidst the infinite varieties of 
opinion and practice which beset ns on every side, it is 
the wildest folly to talk of it as being, in this sense, its 
OAYn interpreter. Our comfort is, not that it can be 
understood without study, but with it ; that the same pains 
which enable us to understand heathen writings, whose 
meaning is of infinitely less value to us, will enable us, 
with God's blessing, to understand the Scriptures also. 
Neither do I mean, that mere intellectual study would 
make them clear to the careless or the undevout ; but, 
supposing us to seek honestly to know God's will, and to 
pray devoutly for his help to guide us to it, then our study 
is not vain nor uncertain ; the mind of the Scriptures may 
be discovered ; we may distinguish plainly between what 
is clear, and what is not clear ; and what is not clear will 
be found far less in amount, and infinitely less in im- 
portance, than what is clear. I do not say, that a true 
understanding of the Scriptures will settle at once all re- 
ligious differences ; — manifestly, it cannot ; for, although 
I may understand them well, yet if a man maintains an 
opinion, or a practice, upon some other authority than 
theirs, we cannot agree together. Nevertheless, we may 
be allowed to hope and believe, that in time, if men could 
be hindered from misinterpreting the Scripture in behalf 
of their own opinions, their opinions themselves would find 
fewer supporters ; for, as Christianity must come, after all, 
from our blessed Lord and his apostles, men will shrink 
from saying that that is no truth of Christianity which 
Christ and his apostles have clearly taught, or that that is 
a truth of Christianity, however ancient, and by whatever 
long line of venerable names supported, w^hicli they have 
as clearly, in our sole authentic records of them, not 
taught. It is not, therefore, without great and reasonable 
hope, that we may devote ourselves to the study of the 



FULL KXOWLEDGE OF SCRIPTURE. 351 

Scriptures ; and those liabits of stucij whicli are cultivated 
here, and in other places of the same kind, are the best 
ordinary means of arriving at the truth. We are con- 
stantly engaged in extracting the meaning of those "who 
have "written in times past, and in a dead language. We 
do this according to certain rules, acknowledged as uni- 
versally as the laws of physical science : these rules are 
developed gradually, — from the simple grammar which 
forms our earliest lessons, to the rules of higher criticism, 
still no less acknowledged, which are understood by those 
of a more advanced age. And we do this for heathen 
writings ; but the process is exactly the same — and we 
continually apply it, also, for that very purpose — with 
what is required to interpret the Word of God. After all 
is done, we shall still, no doubt, find that the Scripture 
has its parables, its passages which cannot now be under- 
stood; but we shall find, also, that by much the larger 
portion of it may be clearly and certainly known ; enough 
to be, in all points which really concern our faith and 
practice, a lantern to our feet, and an enlightener to our 
souls. 



LECTURE XXXYIII. 



Isaiah v. 1. 

Kow will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved touching his 
vineyard. 

Whatever difficulties we may find in understanding 
and applying many parts of the prophetical Scriptures, 
yet every thinking person could follow readily enough, I 
suppose, the chapter from which these words are taken, as 
it was read in the course of this morning's service ; and ho 
would feel, while understanding it as said, immediately and 
in the first instance, of the Jewish Church or nation, seven 
centuries and a half before the birth of our Lord, that it 
was no less applicable to this Christian church and nation 
at the present period. We cannot, indeed, expect to find 
a minute agreement in particular points between ourselves 
and the Jews of old; the difference of times and circum- 
stances renders this impossible ; both they and we stand, 
on the one hand, in so nearly the same relation to God, and 
we both so share, on the other hand, in th* same sinful 
human nature, that the complaints, and remonstrances of 
the prophets of old may often be repeated, even in the 
very same words, by the Christian preacher now. 

If this be so, then the language of various parts of the 
service of the Church in this season of Advent ought to 
excite in us no small apprehension ; for whilst the lessons 

(352) 



WARNINGS OF THE PROPHETS. 353 

from the Old Testament describe the evil state of the 
Jewish people in the eighth century before Christ, and 
threaten it with destruction, so the gospels for this day, 
and for last Sunday, speak of the evil state of the same 
people when our Lord was upon earth; and the chapter 
from which the gospel of this day is taken, contains, as we 
know, a full prophecy of the destruction that was, for the 
second time, going to overwhelm the earthly Jerusalem. 
We cannot but fear, therefore, that if our state now be 
like that of God's people of old, eight centuries before our 
Lord's coming, and again like their state at his coming : 
and if, after the first period, their city and temple were 
burnt, and they were carried captive to Babylon, — and 
again, after the second period, the city and temple were 
burnt again, and the people were dispersed, even to this 
day, — that, as the punishment has twice surely followed 
the sin, so it will not fail to find it out in this third case 
also. 

And be it remembered that the people, or church of 
God, as such, can receive their punishment only in this 
Avorld : for, taken as a body, it is an institution for this 
world only. We each of us, no doubt, shall have our own 
separate individual judgment after death ; and, in the 
mean time, our fortunes and our character often bear no 
just correspondence with each other. But nations and 
churches have their judgments here : and although God's 
long-suff'ering so suspends it for many generations that it 
may seem as if it would never fall, yet does it come surely 
at the last ; and almost always we can ourselves trace the 
connexion between the sin and the punishment, and can 
see that the one was clearly the consequence of the other. 
And thus our church and nation may feel their national 
judgments in this world quite independently of the several 
personal judgments which will be passed upon us each 
30* 



354 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST 

hereafter individuallj, when we stand before Christ's 
judgment seat. 

I have thus ventured to bring the condition of the church 
as a body before our minds, although well knowing how 
much more we are concerned with the state of our own 
souls individually. Yet still the more general view is not 
without great use ; and indeed it bears directly upon our 
individual state : our actions and our feelings having often 
a close connexion with general church matters ; and these 
actions and feelings being necessarily good or bad, accord- 
ing to the soundness of our judgment on the matter which 
occasions them. Besides which, it seems to me that 
general views, rather than what relates to particular faults, 
may be with most propriety dwelt on by those who have 
no direct connexion with the congregation which they are 
addressing. 

In the first place, then, whenever we think of the state 
and prospects of Christ's church, whether for good or for 
evil, it is most desirable that we should rightly understand 
our own relations to it. " The vineyard of the Lord of 
hosts is the house of Israel ;" or, in the language of the 
New Testament, " Christ is the vine, and we are the 
branches." Men continually seem to forget that they are 
members of the chui'ch ; citizens, to use St. Paul's ex- 
pression, -of Christ's kingdom, as much as ever they are 
citizens of their earthly country. But they speak of the 
church as they might speak of any useful institution or 
society in their neighbourhood, whose object they approved 
of, and which they were glad to encourage, but without 
becoming members of it, or identifying themselves with its 
success or failure. For example, they speak of the church 
as they might speak of the universities, which indeed are 
institutions of great importance to the whole country, but 
yet they are manifestly distinct from the mass of the com- 



CONSISTS NOT OF THE CLERGY ONLY. 355 

munity : they have their otnh members, their own laws, and 
their own government, with which people in general have 
nothing to do. And so many persons speak and feel of 
the church, regarding it evidently as consisting only of the 
clergy: our common language, no doubt, helping this 
confusion, because we often speak of a man's going into 
the church when he enters into holy orders, just as if 
ordination were the admission into the church, and not 
baptism. Now, if the clergy did indeed constitute the 
church, then it would very much resemble the condition of 
the universities : for it would then be indeed a society very 
important to the welfare of the whole country, but yet one 
that was completely distinct, and which had its members, 
laws, and government quite apart : for men in general do 
not belong to the clergy, nor are they concerned directly 
in such canons as relate to the peculiar business of the 
clergy, nor does the bishop's superintendence, as commonly 
exercised, extend at all to them. But God designed for 
his church far more than that it should contain one order 
of men only, or that it should comprise commonly but one 
single individual in a parish, preaching to and teaching the 
rest of the inhabitants, like a missionary amongst a popu- 
lation of heathens. Look at St. Paul's account of the 
church of Corinth, in the 12th chapter of his 1st epistle to 
the Corinthians, and see if any two things can be more 
different than his notion of a church and that which many 
people seem to entertain amongst us. Compare the living 
body there described, made up of so many various mem- 
bers, each having its separate office, yet each useful to and 
needed by the others and by the body, — and our notion 
of a parish committed to the cbarge of a single individual : 
as if all the manifold gifts which the church requires could 
by possibility be comprised in the person of any one 
Christian ; as if the whole bui'den were to rest upon his 



856 THE ORDER OF DEACO^"S KXTHsCT. 

siioulders, and tlie other inhabitants might regard the 
■welfare of the church as his concern only, and not theirs. 

But not only is the church too often confined in men's 
notions to the single class or profession of the clergy, but 
it has been narrowed still farther by the practical extinc- 
tion of one of the orders of the clergy itself. Where the 
laity have come to regard their own share in the concerns 
of the chui'ch as next to nothing, the order of deacons, 
forming, as it were, a link between the clergy and the 
laity, becomes proportionably of still greater importance. 
The business of the deacons, as we well know, was in an 
especial manner to look after the relief of the poor ; and 
by combining this charge with the power of baptizing, 
of reading the Scriptures, and of preaching also, when 
authorized by the bishop, they exhibited the peculiar 
character of Christianity, that of sanctifying the business 
of this world by doing eyerything in the name of the Lord 
Jesus. No church, so far as we know, certainly no church 
in any town, existed without its deacons : they were 
as essential to its completeness as its bishop and its 
presbyters. 

Take any one of our large towns now, and what do we 
find ? A bishop, not of that single town only, but of fifty 
others besides : one presbyter in each church, and no 
deacons ! Practically, and according to its proper charac- 
ter, the order of deacons is extinct ; and those who now 
bear the name are most commonly found exercising the 
functions of presbyters ; that is, instead of acting as the 
assistants of a presbyter, they are often the sole ministers 
of their respective parishes; they alone baptize; alone 
offer up the prayers of the church, alone preach the word : 
nothing marks their original character, except their 
inability to administer the communion ; and thus, by a 
strange anomaly, the church in such parishes is actually 



CHURCH DISCIPLINE EXTINCT. 357 

left without any power of celebrating its highest act, that 
of commemorating the death of Christ in the Lord's 
supper ; and if it were not for another great evil, the 
unfrequent celebration of the Communion, the system 
could not go on: because the deacon would be so often 
obliged to apply to other ministers to perform that duty 
for him, that the inconvenience, as well as the unfit- 
ness, of the actual practice, would be manifest to every 
one. 

Again, what has become of church discipline ? That it 
has perished, we all well know : but its loss is the conse- 
quence of that fatal error which makes the clergy alone 
constitute the church. It is quite certain that men will not 
allow the members of a single profession to exercise the 
authority of society ; to create and define ofi"ences ; to 
determine their punishment, and to be the judges of each 
particular ofiender. As long as the clergy are supposed 
to constitute the whole church, church discipline would be 
nothing but priestly tyranny. And yet the absence of 
discipline is a most grievous evil ; and there is no doubt 
that, although it must be vain when opposed to public 
opinion, yet, when it is the expression of that opinion, 
there is nothing which it cannot achieve. But public 
opinion cannot enforce church discipline now, because that 
discipline would not be now the expression of the voice of 
the church, but simply of a small part of the church, of 
the clergy only. 

So deeply has this fatal error of regarding the clergy as 
the church extended itself, that at this moment a man's 
having been baptized is no security for his being so much 
as a believer in the truth of Christianity : no matter that 
he was made in his baptism a member of Christ, a child 
of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven ; no 
matter that at a more advanced period of his life he was 



358 

coniirmed, and entered into the cliurch by his O'v^ti act and 
deed; still the church belongs to the clergy; they may 
hold such and such language, and teach such and such 
doctrine ; it would be very improper in them to do other- 
wise ; and he has a great respect for the chui'ch, and 
would strenously resist all its enemies, but truly, as for his 
own belief and his own conduct, these he will guide 
according to other principles, as imperative upon him as 
the rules of the church upon churchmen. Well indeed, do 
such men bear witness that they are not of the church 
indeed ; that their portion is not with God's people ; that 
Christ is not their Saviour, nor the Holy Spu'it their 
Comforter and Guide : but what blasphemy is it to call 
themselves friends of the church ! as if Christ's church 
could have any friends except God and his holy angels : 
the church has its living and redeemed members ; it may 
have those who are craving to be admitted within its shelter, 
being convinced that God is in it of a truth ; but beyond 
these he who is not with it is against it ; he who is not 
Christ's servant, serves his enemy. 

Farther, it is this same deadly error which is the root 
and substance of popery. There is no one abuse of the 
Romish svstem which may not be traced to the ori^rinal 
and very early error of drawing a wide distinction between 
the clergy and the laity ; of investing the former in such a 
peculiar degree with the attributes of the church that at 
last they retained them almost exclusively. In other 
words, the great evil of popery is, that it has destroyed 
the Christian church, and has substituted a priesthood in 
its room. This is the fault of the Greek church, almost as 
much as of the Roman ; and the peculiar tenet of the 
Romish church, that the supreme government is vested in 
one single member of this priesthood, the Bishop of Rome, 
is in some respects rather an improvement of the system, 



THAT IT DESTROYS THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, 359 



than an aggravation of it. For even an absolute mo- 
narcliy is a less evil than an absolute aristocracy ; and an 
infallible Pope is no greater corruption of Christ's truth, 
than an infallible general council. The real evils of the 
system are of a far older date than the supremacy of the 
Bishop of Rome, and exist in places where that supremacy 
is resolutely denied. And if we attend to them care- 
fully, we shall see that these evils have especially affected 
the Christian church as distinguished from the Christian 
religion. It is worth our while to attend to this distinc- 
tion ; for the Christian religion and the Christian church 
together, and neither without the other, form the perfect 
idea of Christianity. Now, by the Christian religion, I 
mean the revelation of what God has done or will do for 
us in Christ ; the great doctrines of the Trinity, the incar- 
nation, the atonement, the resuiTection, the presence of the 
Holy Spirit amongst us, and our own resurrection here- 
after, to an existence of eternal happiness or misery. 
And these truths, if revealed to any single person livino- 
in an uninhabited island, might be abundantly sufficient 
for his salvation ; if God disposed his heart to receive 
them, and to believe them earnestly, they would be the 
means of his overcoming his corrupt nature, and of passing* 
from death unto life. But because men do not generally 
live alone, but with one another ; and because they cannot 
but greatly hinder, or help each other by their mutual 
influence, therefore the Christian church was instituted for 
the purpose of spreading and furthering the growth of the 
Christian religion in men's hearts; and its various 
ministeries, its sacraments, its services and festivals, and 
its discipline were all designed with that object. And it 
is all these which popery has perverted ; popery, whether 
in the Roman church or in the Greek church, or even in 
the Protestant church, for it has existed more or less in all. 



860 THOUGH NOT THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 

But even in the Roman church, where the perversion has 
been most complete, it has comparatively affected but 
little the truths of the Christian religion ; all the great 
doctrines, which I mentioned, are held as by ourselves ; 
the three creeds, the Apostles' creed, the Nicene, and the 
Athanasian, are used by the Roman church no less than 
by our own. Thus it often happens that we can read with 
great edification the devotional works of Roman Catholic 
writers, because in such works the individual stands apart 
from the Christian church, and is concerned only with the 
Christian religion : they show how one single soul, having 
learnt the tidings of redemption with faith and thankful- 
ness, improves them to its own salvation. But the moment 
that he goes out of his closet, and begins to speak and 
act amongst other men, then the corruption of popery 
shows itself. The Christian church was designed to help 
each individual towards a more perfect knowledge and love 
of God, by the counsel and example of his brethren, and 
by the practices which he was to observe in their society. 
But the corrupt church exercises its influence for evil ; it 
omits all the benefits to be derived from a living society, 
and puts forward, in their place, the observance of rites 
and ceremonies ; knowledge and love are no longer looked 
to as the perfections of a Christian, but ignorance and 
blind obedience ; not the mortifying all our evil passions 
universally, but the keeping them chained up, as it were 
under priestly control, to be let loose at the priest's 
bidding, against those whom he calls the church's 
enemies ; that glorious church which he has destroyed 
and converted it into an idol temple, in that he, as God 
sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is 
God. 

To resist this great and monstrous evil, we must not ex- 
claim against it under one of its forms only, even although 



RESTORATION OF THE CHURCH A DUTY. 361 

tliat form exhibit it, indeed, in its most complete deform- 
ity ; but we must strive against it under all its forms, re- 
membering that its essence consists in putting the clergy 
in the place of the church ; and taking from the great 
mass of the church their proper share in its government, 
in its offices, and therefore in its benefits, and in the sense 
of its solemn responsibilities. We speak often of church 
extension, meaning by this term the building new places 
of public worship, and the appointing additional ministers 
to preach the word and administer the sacraments. And 
no doubt such church extension is a good and blessed 
work, for it brings the knowledge of the truths of Christ's 
religion, and the benefit of his ordinances, the sacraments, 
within the reach of many who might otherwise have been 
without them. But it were a yet truer and more blessed 
church extension which should add to the building and the 
single minister, the real living church itself, with all its 
manifold offices and ministries, with its pure discipline, 
with its holy and loving sense of brotherhood. Without 
this, Christ will still, indeed, as heretofore, lay his hands 
on some few sick folk and heal them ; his grace will con- 
vey the truths of his gospel to individual souls, and they 
will believe and be saved. But the fulfilment of pro- 
phecy ; the triumph of Christ's kingdom ; the changing 
an evil world into a world redeemed ; this can only be 
done by a revival of the Christian church in its power, the 
living temple of the Holy Ghost, which, visibly to all man- 
kind, in the wisdom and holiness of its members, showed 
that God was in the midst of it. It may be that this is a 
fond hope, which we may not expect to see realized; but 
looking on the one hand to the strong and triumphant 
language of prophecy, I know not how any hope of the 
advancement of Christ's kingdom can be more bold than 
God's word will warrant: and on the other, tracing the 
31 



362 WHY DO MEN ENTER THE CHURCH? 

past history of the church, i:s gradual corruption may be 
deduced distinctly from one early and deadly mischief, 
"w^hich has destroyed its efficacy ; so that, if this mischief 
can be removed, and the church become such as Christ de- 
signed it to be, it does not seem presumptuous to hope that 
his appointed instrument, working according to his will, 
should be enabled to obtain the full blessings of his 
promise. 

And now, in conclusion, if we ask, what should follow 
from all that has been said ? -what it should lead us all, if 
it be true, to feel or to do ? — the answer is, that conside- 
rations of this sort are not such as lead at once to some 
distinct change in our conduct : to the laying aside some 
favouidte sin, or the practising some long neglected duty. 
And yet the thoughts which I have endeavoured to sug- 
gest to your minds may, if dwelt upon, lead, in the end, 
to a very considerable alteration, both in our feelings and 
in our practice. First of all, it is not a little matter to be 
convinced practically, that it is baptism, and not ordina- 
tion, "which makes us members of the church ; that it is 
by sharing in the communion of Christ's body and blood, 
not by being admitted into the ministry, that the privileges 
and graces of Christ's church are conferred upon us. And 
most wisely, and most truly, does our Church separate or- 
dination from the two Christian sacraments, as an institu- 
tion far less solemn, and conferring graces far less im- 
portant : for the difference between a Christian and a 
Christian minister is but one of office, not of moral or 
spiritual advancement, not of greater or less nearness to 
God. One is our master, even Christ ; and all we are 
brethren. Words which certainly do not imply that all 
members of the church are to have the same office, or that 
all offices are of equal importance and dignity ; but which 
do imply, most certainly, that any attempt to convert the 



CHURCH QUESTIONS 363 

ministry into a priesthoood, that is, to represent them as 
standing, in any matter, as mediators between Christ and 
his people, or as being essentially the channel through 
■which his grace must pass to his church, is directly in op- 
position to him ; and is no better than idolatry. It was by 
baptism that we have all been engrafted into Christ's 
body ; it is by the communion of his body and blood that 
we continue to abide in him ; it is in his whole body, in 
his church, and not in its ministers, as distinct from his 
church, that his Holy Spirit abides. 

Thus feeling that w^e each are members of the church, 
that it is our highest country, to which we are bound with 
a far deeper love than to our earthly country, is not its 
w^elfare our welfare ; its triumph our triumph ; its failures 
our shame ? We shall see, then, that church questions 
are not such merely, or principally, as concern the pay- 
ment of the clergy, or their discipline, but all questions in 
which God's glory and man's sins or duties are concerned; 
all questions in the decision of which there is a moral good 
and evil ; a grieving of Christ's Spirit, or a conformity to 
him. And in such questions as concern the church, in the 
more narrow and common sense of the word, seeing that 
we are all members of the church, we should not neglect 
them, as the concern of others, but take an interest in 
them, and act in them, so far as we have opportunity, as 
in a matter which most nearly concerns ourselves. We 
feel that we have an interest in our country's affairs, al- 
though we are not members of the government or of the 
legislature ; we have our part to perform, without at all 
overstepping the modesty of private life : and it is the 
constant influence of public opinion, and the active in- 
terest taken by the country at large in its own concerns, 
which, in spite of occasional delusion or violence, is 
mainly instrumental in preserving to us the combined 



364 ARE THE CONCERN OF ALL CHURCHMEN. 

vigour and order of our political constitution. And so, 
if we took an equal interest in the affairs of our divine 
commonwealth, our Christian church, and endeavoured as 
eagerly to promote every thing which tended to its welfare, 
and to put down and prevent every thing which might 
work it mischief, then the efforts of the clergy to advance 
Christ's kingdom would be incalculably aided, while there 
would then be no dangler of our investing them with the 
duties and responsiblities which belong properly to the 
whole church ; they could not then have dominion over our 
faith, nor by possibility become lords over God's heritage, 
but would be truly ensamples to the flock, the helpers of 
oui' joy, the glory of Christ. 



LECTURE XXXIX, 



CoLOSsiANS iii. 17. 



Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in tlie name of the Lord 
Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father hy Him, 

This, like the other general rules of the gospel, is 
familiar enough to us all in its own words ; but we are 
very apt to forbear making the application of it. In fact, 
he who were to apply it perfectly would be a perfect 
Christian : for a life of which every word and deed were 
said and done in the name of the Lord Jesus, would be a 
life indeed worthy of the children of God, and such as 
they lead in heaven ; it would leave no room for sin to 
enter. The art of our enemy has been therefore to make 
us leave this command of the apostle's in its general sense, 
and avoid exploring, so to speak, all the wisdom contained 
within it. Certain actions of our lives, our religious ser- 
vices, the more solemn transactions in which we are en- 
gaged, we are willing to do in Christ's name ; but that 
multitude of common words and ordinary actions by which 
more than sixty-nine out of our seventy years are filled, 
we take away from our Lord's dominion, under the foolish 
and hypocritical pretence that they are too trifling and too 
familiar to be mixed up with the thought of things so 
solemn. 

This is one fault, and by far the most common. We 
make Christ's service the business only of a very small 
31 * (36o) 



366 OPPOSITE ERROFvS. 

portion of our lives ; we hallow only a very small part of 
our words and actions by doing them in bis name. Unlike 
our Lord's own parable, where he compares Christianity 
to leaven hidden in the three measures of meal till the 
whole was leavened, the practice rather has been to keep 
the leaven confined to one little corner of the mass of meal ; 
to take care that it should not spread so as to leaven the 
whole mass ; to keep our hearts still in the state of the 
world when Christ \dsited it — ^' the light shineth in dark- 
ness, and the darkness comprehended it not;" that is, it 
did not take the light into itself so as to be wholly enlight- 
ened : the light shone, and there was a bright space 
immediately around it ; but beyond there was a blackness 
of darkness into which it vainly strove to penetrate. 

On the other hand there has been, though more rarely, 
a fault of the opposite sort. Men have said that they were 
in all their actions of ordinary life doing Christ's will, that 
they endeavoured always to be promoting some good 
object ; and that the peculiar services of religion, as they 
are called, were useless, inasmuch as in spirit they are 
worshipping God always. This is a great error ; because, 
as a matter of fact, it is false. We may safely say that 
no man ever did keep his heart right with God in his 
ordinary life, that no one ever became one with Christ, 
and Christ with him, without seeking Christ where he 
reveals himself, it may not be more really, but to our 
weakness far more sensibly, than in the common business 
of daily life. We may be happy if we can find Christ 
there, after we have long sought him and found him in the 
way of his own ordinances, in prayer, and in his holy 
communion. Even Christ himself, when on earth, though 
his whole day was undeniably spent in doing the will of 
his heavenly father, — although to him doubtless God was 
ever present in the commonest acts no less than in th^ 



OUR POLITICAL CONDUCT KOT CERISTIAN. 367 

most solemn, — yet even he, after a day spent in all good 
■works, desired a yet more direct intercourse with God, and 
was accustomed to spend a large portion of the night in 
retirement and prayer. 

Without this, indeed, we shall most certainly not say 
and do all in the name of the Lord Jesus ; much more 
shall we be in danger of forgetting him altogether. But 
supposing that we are not neglectful of our religious duties, 
in the common sense of the term, that we do pray and 
read the Scriptures, and partake of Christ's communion, 
yet it will often happen that we do not connect our prayers, 
nor our reading, nor our communion, with many of the 
common portions of our lives ; that there are certain things 
in which we take great interest, which, notwithstanding, 
we leave, as it were, wholly without the range of the light 
of Christ's Spirit. There is a story told that, in times 
and countries where there prevailed the deepest ignorance, 
some who came to be baptized into the faith of Christ, 
converted from their heathen state, not in reality but only 
in name, were accustomed to leave their right arm unbap- 
tized, with the notion that this arm, not being pledged to 
Christ's service, might wreak upon their enemies those 
works of hatred and revenge which in baptism they had 
promised to renounce. It is too much to say that some- 
thing like this unbaptized right arm is still to be met with 
amongst us — that men too often leave some of their very 
most important concerns, what they call by way of emi- 
nence their business — their management of their own 
money affairs, and their conduct in public matters — 
wholly out of the control of Christ's law ? 

Now at this very time public matters are engaging the 
^thoughts of a great many persons all over the kingdom : 
and are not only engaging their thoughts, but are also 
become a practical matter, in which they are acting with 



368 CHRISTIAN DUTY AT ELECTIONS. 

great earnestness. Is it nothing that there should be so 
much interest felt, so much pains taken, and yet that 
neither should be done in the name of the Lord Jesus, nor 
to the glory of God ? It cannot be unsuited to the present 
season to dTvell a little on this subject, which has nothing 
-whatever to do with men's differences of opinion, but relates 
only to their acting, whatever be their political opinions, 
on Christian principles, and in a Christian spirit. 

First, consider what we pray for in the prayer which we 
have been using every week for the high court of parlia- 
ment : we pray to God, that " all things may be so ordered 
and settled by the endeavours of parliament, upon the 
best and surest foundations, that peace and happiness, 
truth and justice, religion and piety, may be established 
among us for all generations." These great blessings we 
beg of God to secure to us and to our children through the 
endeavours of parliament; if, therefore, we are any ways 
concerned in fixing who the persons are to be who are to 
compose this parliament, it is plain that there is put into 
our hands a high privilege, if you will ; but along with it, 
as with all other privileges, a most solemn responsibility. 

But, if it be a solemn responsibility in the sight of God 
and of Christ, surely the act of voting, which many think 
so lightly of, and which many more consider a thing wholly 
political and worldly, becomes, indeed, a very important 
Christian duty, not to be discharged hastily or selfishl^^, 
in blind prejudice or passion, from self-interest, or in mere 
careless good nature and respect of persons ; but delibe- 
rately, seriously, calmly, and, so far as we can judge our 
deceitful hearts, purely ; not without prayer to Ilim who 
giveth wisdom liberally to those that ask it, that he will be 
pleased to guide them aright, to his own glory, and to the 
good of his people. 

Do I say that if we were to approach this duty in this 



CHRISTIAN DUTY AT ELECTIONS: 869 

spirit, and with such prayers, we should all agree in the 
same opinion, and all think the same of the same men? 
No, by no means ; we might still greatly differ ; but we 
should, at least, have reason to respect one another, and 
to be in charity with one another; and if we all earnestly 
desired and prayed to be directed to God's glory, and the 
public good, God, I doubt not, would give us all those ends 
which we so purely desired, although in our estimate of 
the earthly means and instruments by which they were to 
be gained, we had honestly differed from one another. 

Now, supposing that we had this conviction, that what 
we were going to do concerned the glory of God and the 
good of his people, and that we approached it therefore 
seriously as a Christian duty, yet it may be well that many 
men might feel themselves deficient in knowledge ; they 
might not understand the great questions at issue ; they 
might honestly doubt how they could best fulfil the trust 
committed to them. I know that the most ignorant man 
will feel no such hesitation if he is oroino: to srive his vote 

CO c 

from fancy, or from prejudice, or from interest ; these are 
motives which determine our conduct quickly aud deci- 
sively. But if we regard our vote as a talent for which we 
must answer before God that we may well be embarrassed 
by a consciousness of ignorance; we may well be anxious 
to get some guidance from others, if we cannot find it in 
om'selves. Here, then, is the place for authority, — for 
relying, that is, on the judgment of others, when we feel 
that we cannot judge for oui'selves. But is their no room 
for the exercise of much good sense and fairness in our- 
selves as to the choice of the person by whose judgment 
we mean to be guided ? Are we so little accustomed to 
estimate our neighbours' characters rightly, as to be un- 
able to determine whom we mav consult with advanta^re ? 
Surely if their be any one whom we have proved, in the 



870 

affairs of common life, to be at once honest and sensible, 
to such an one "we should apply when we are at a loss as to 
public matters. If there is such an one amongst our own 
relations or personal friends, we should go to him in 
preference : if not, we can surely find one such amongst 
our neighbours : and here the authority of such of our 
neighbours as have a direct connexion with us, if we have 
had reason to respect their judgment and their principles, 
may be properly preferred to that of indifferent persons ; 
the authority of a master, or an employer, or of our 
minister, or of our landlord, may and ought, under such 
circumstances, to have a great and decisive influence 
over us. 

On the other hand, supposing again that we have this 
strong sense of the great responsibility in the sight of 
God of every man who has the privilege of a vote, we shall 
be exceedingly careful not to tempt him to sin by fulfilling 
this duty ill. Nothing can be more natural or more 
proper than that those who have strong impressions them- 
selves as to the line to be followed in public matters, should 
be desirous of persuading others to think as they do ; 
every man who loves truth and righteousness must wish 
that w^hat he himself earnestly believes to be true and 
righteous, should be loved by others also ; but the highest 
truth, if professed by one who believes it, not in his heart, 
is to him a lie, and he sins greatly by professing it. Let 
us try as much as we will to convince our neighbours ; but 
let us beware of influencing their conduct, when we fail in 
influencing their convictions : he who bribes or frightens 
his neighbour into doing an act which no good man would 
do for reward or from fear, is tempting his neighbour to 
sin ; he is assisting to lower and to harden his conscience, 
— to make him act for the favour or from the fear of man, 
instead of for the favour or from the fear of God ; and if 



OR INFLUENCING THE VOTES OF OTHERS. 371 

tliis be a sin in him, it is a double sin in us to tempt him to 
it. Nor let us deceive ourselves by talking of the great- 
ness of the stake at issue ; that God's glory and the 
public good are involved in the result of the contest, and 
that therefore we must do all in our power to win it. Let 
us by all means do all that we can do without sin ; but let 
us not dare to do evil that good may come, for that is the 
part of unbelief; it becomes those who will not trust God 
with the government of the world, but would fain guide 
its course themselves. Here, indeed, our Lord's command 
does apply to us, that we be not anxious ; " Which of you 
by taking thought can add to his stature one cubit ?" 
How little can we see of the course of Providence ! how 
little can we be sure that what we judged for the best in 
public affairs may not lead to mischief 1 But these things 
are in God's hand ; our business is to keep ourselves and 
our neighbours from sin, and not to do or encourage in 
others any thing that is evil, however great the advantages 
which we may fancy likely to flow from that evil to the 
cause even of the highest good. 

There is no immediate prospect, indeed, that we in this 
particular congregation shall be called upon to practise the 
duty of which I have been now speaking ; and, indeed, it 
is for that very reason that I could dwell on the subject 
more freely. But what is going on all around us, what we 
hear of, read of, and talk of so much as we are many of 
us likely to do in the next week or two about political 
matters, that we should be accustomed to look upon as 
Christians : we should by that standard try our common 
views and language about it, and, if it may be, correct 
them : that so hereafter, if we be called upon to act, we 
may act, according to the Apostle's teaching, in the name 
of our Lord Jesus. And I am quite sure if we do so think 
and so act, although our differences of opinion might remain 



372 USE OF SPEAKING ON THIS SUBJECT. 

just the same, yet the change in ourselves, and I verily 
believe in the blessings which God would give us, would be 
more than we can well believe ; and a general election, 
instead of calling forth, as it now does, a host of unchristian 
passions and practices, would be rather an exercise of 
Christian judgment, and forbearance, and faith, and 
charity ; promoting, whatever was the mere political 
result, the glory of God, advancing Christ's kingdom, and 
the good of this, as it would be then truly called, Christian 
nation. 



NOTES. 



Note A. P. 5. 

^^ But our path is not haclcwards hut omoards." — This thought is 
expressed very beautifully in lines as wise and true as they are 
poetical : 

" Grieve not for these : nor dare lament 

That thus from childhood's thoughts we roam : 
Not backward are our glances bent, 
But forward to our Father's home. 
Eternal growth has no such fears, 

But freshening still with seasons past. 
The old man clogs its earlier years, 
And simple childhood comes the last." 

Burbridge's Poems, p. 309. 



Note B. P. 102. 

" Some may Jcnow the story of that German nohleman" &c. — The 
Baron von Canitz. He lived in the latter half of the seventeenth 
century, and was engaged in the service of the electors of Branden- 
burg, both of the great elector and his successor. He was the 
author of several hymns, one of which is of remarkable beauty, as 
may be seen in the following translation, for the greatest part of 
which I am indebted to the kindness of a friend ; but the language 
of the original, in several places, cannot be adequately translated 
in English. 

32 (373) 



374 NOTES. 

*' Come, my soul, thou must be waking— 
Now is breaking 

O'er the earth another day. 
Come to Him who made this splendour 
See thou render 

All thy feeble powers can pay. 

From the stars thy course be learning : 
Dimly burning 

'Neath the sun their light grows pale: 
So let all that sense delighted 
While benighted 

From God's presence fade and fail. 

Lo ! how all of breath partaking, 
Gladly waking, 

Hail the sun's enlivening light ! 
Plants, whose life mere sap doth nourish, 
Rise and flourish. 

When he breaks the shades of night. 

Thou too hail the light returning, — 
Ready burning 

Be the incense of thy powers; — 
For the night is safely ended: 
God hath tended 

With His care thy helpless hours. 

Pray that He may prosper ever 
Each endeavour 

When thine aim is good and true ; 
But that He may ever thwart thee, 
And convert thee, 

When thou evil wouldst pursue. 

Think that He thy ways beholdeth — 
He unfoldeth 

Every fault that lurks within ; 
Every stain of shame glossM over 
Can discover. 

And discern each deed of sin. 



NOTES. 375 



Fetter'd to the fleeting hours, 
All our powers, 

Tain and brief, are borne away ; 
Time, my soul, thy ship is steering, 
Onward veering. 

To the gulph of death a prey. 

May'st thou then on life's last morrow, 
Free from sorrow, 

Pass away in slumber sweet ; 
And released from death's dark sadness, 
Rise in gladness. 

That far brighter Sun to greet. 

Only God's free gifts abuse not. 
His light refuse not, 

But still His Spirit's voice obey ; 
Soon shall joy thy brow be wreathing. 
Splendour breathing 

Fairer than the fairest day. 

If aught of care this morn oppress thee, 
To Him address thee. 

Who, like the sun, is good to all : 
He gilds the mountain tops, the while 
His gracious smile 

Will on the humblest valley fall. 

Round the gifts His bounty show'rs. 
Walls and tow'rs 

Girt with flames thy God shall rear : 
Angel legions to defend thee 
Shall attend thee. 

Hosts whom Satan's self shall fear." 



Note C. P. 1'2'2. 

''But, once admit a single exception, and the infallible virtue of 
the rule ceases.'' — Thus the famous Canon of Yincentius Lirinensis is 
like tradition itself, always either superfluous or insufficient. Taken 



376 NOTES. 

literally, it is true and worthless ; — because what all have asserted, 
always, and in all places, supposing of course that the means of 
judging were in their power, may be assumed to be some indisputa- 
ble axiom, such as never will be disputed any more than it has been 
disputed hitherto. But take it with any allowance, and then it is 
of no use in settling a question : for what most men have asserted, 
most commonly, and in most places, has a certain a priori probability, 
it is true, but by no means such as may not be outweighed by 
probabilities on the other side ; for the extreme improbability con- 
sists not in the prevalence of error amongst millions, or for centuries, 
or over whole continents, — but in its being absolutely universal, so 
universal, that truth could not find a single witness at any time or 
in any country. But the single witness is enough to "justify the 
ways of God,'' and reduces what otherwise would have been a mon- 
strous triumph of evil to the character of a severe trial of our faith, 
severe indeed as the trials of an evil world will be, but no more than 
a trial such as, with God's grace, may be overcome. 



Note D. P. 189. 

" It loas an admirable definition of that which excites laughter/^ &c. 
— To yi%Qiov audpfrjixd ti xai aXoxos o.vuibvvov xol ov ^Oap-tixov olov tvdvi 
to ye'Kotov 7tp6acoTtov aloxpov tv xo.i> 6Lc<Jtpaixixepov duiv obiiurj^. — AristoUe, 
Poetic, ii. 



Note E. P. 245. 

" I loould endeavour just to touch upon some of the purposes for 
lohich the Scripture tells us that Christ died." — The Collects for 
Easter Sunday and the Sundays just before it and after it, illustrate 
the enumeration here given. The Collect for the Sunday next 
before Easter speaks of Christ's death only as an " example of his 
great humility." The Collect for Easter-day speaks of the resurrec- 
tion, and connects it with our spiritual resurrection, as does also the 
Collect for the first Sunday after Easter. But the collect for the 
Second Sunday after Easter speaks of Christ as being at once -our 
sacrifice for sin and our example of godly life, — a sacrifice to be 
regarded with entire thankfulness, and an example to be daily fol- 
lowed. 



NOTES. 377 



Note F. P. 282. 

" Such also ivas to be the state of the Christian Church after our 
Lord's ascension." — And therefore, as I think, St. Peter applies to 
the Christians of Asia Minor the very terms applied to the Jews 
living in Assyria or in Egypt; he addresses them as TtapsTti^fioi^ 
6iaa7iopa.g, (1 Peter i. 1,) that is, as strangers and sojourners, scattered 
up and down in a country that was not properly their own, and 
living in a sort of banishment from their true home. That the 
words are not addressed to Jewish Christians, and therefore are 
not to be understood in their simple historical sense, seems evident 
from the second chapter of the Epistle, verses 9, 10, and iv. 2, 3. 



Note G. P. 315. 

^^ Not only an outward miracle, hut the changed circumstances of the 
times may speak God's will no less clearly than a miracle "Sec — What 
I have here said does not at all go beyond what has been said on the 
same subject by Hooker: "Laws, though both ordained of God 
himself, and the end for which they were ordained continuing, may, 
notwithstanding, cease, if by alteration of persons or times they be 
found insufficient to attain unto that end. In which respect why 
may we not presume that God doth even call for such change or 
alteration as the very condition of things themselves doth make neces- 
sary ? .... In this case, therefore, men do not presume to change 
God's ordinance, but they yield thereunto, requiring itself to be 
changed." — Ecclesiastical Polity, b. iii. ^ 10. 



Note H. P. 320. 

" Nor is it less strange that any should ever have been afraid of 
their understandings, and shoidd have sought goodness through preju- 
dice, and blindness, and folly J' — For some time past • the words 
" Rationalism'^ and " Rationalistic" have been freely used as terms 
of reproach by writers on religious subjects ; the 73d No. of the 
'' Tracts for the Times" is entitled, " On the introduction of Rational- 
istic Principles into Religion ;" and a whole chapter in Mr. Glad- 
38* 



378 NOTES. 

stone's late work on Church Principles is headed "Rationalism." 
Yet we still want a clear definition of the thing signified by this 
name. The Tract for the Times says. "To rationalize, is to ask for 
reasons out of place ; to ask improperly how we are to account for 
certain things ; to be unwilling to believe them unless they can be 
accounted for, i. e. referred to something else as a cause, to some 
existing system, as harmonizing with them, or taking them up into 
itself. .... It is characterised by two peculiarities; — its love of 
systematizing, and its basing its system upon personal experience, 
on the evidence of sense." — P. 2. Mr. Gladstone says more generally, 
" Rationalism is commonly, at least in this country, taken to be the 
reduction of Christian doclrine to the standard and measure of the 
human understanding." — P. 37. But neither of these definitions 
will include all the arguments and statements which have been 
called by various writers " rationalistic ;" and while the terms used 
are thus vague, they are often applied very indiscriminately, and the 
tendency of this use of them is to depreciate the exercise of the 
intellectual faculties generally. The subject seems to deserve fuller 
consideration than it has yet received; there is a real evil which the 
term Rationalism is meant to denounce ; but it has not been clearly 
apprehended, and what is good has sometimes been confounded with 
it, and denounced under the same name. 

I cannot pretend to discuss the subject fully in a mere note, even 
if I were otherwise competent to do it. But one or two points may 
be noticed, as likely to assist the inquiry, wherever it is worthily 
entered on. 

1st. It is important to bear in mind the distinction which Coleridge 
enforces so earnestly between the understanding and the reason. I 
do not know whether Mr. Gladstone, in the passage quoted above, 
uses the word "understanding" as synonymous with reason, or in 
that stricter sense in which Coleridge employs it. But the writer of 
the Tract seems to allude to the stricter sense, when he calls it a 
characteristic of rationalism " to base its system upon personal ex- 
perience, on the evidence of sense." If this be the case, then it 
would seem that rationalism is the appealing to the decision of the 
understanding in points where the decision properly belongs not to 
the understanding, but to the reason. This is a great fault, and one 
to which all persons who belong to the sensualist school in philoso- 
phy, as opposed to the idealist school, would be more or less addicted. 
But then, this fault consists not in an over-estimating of man's intel- 
lectual nature generally, but in the exalting one part of it unduly, to 



NOTES. 379 

the injury of another part ; in deferring to the understanding, rather 
than to the reason. 

2d. Faith and reason are often invidiously contrasted with each 
other, as if they were commonly described in Scripture as antagonists ; 
whereas faith is more properly opposed to sight, or to lust, being, in 
fact, a very high exercise of the pure reason ; inasmuch as we believe 
truths which our senses do not teach us, and which our passions 
would have us, therefore, reject, because those truths are taught by 
liim in whom reason recognises its own author, and the infallible 
source of all truth. 

3d. It were better to oppose reason to passion than to faith ; for 
it may be safely said, that he who neglects his reason, so far as 
he does neglect it, does not lead a life of faith afterwards, but a life 
of passion. He does not draw nearer to God, but to the brutes, or 
rather to the devils ; for his passions cannot be the mere instinctive 
appetites of the brute, but derive from the wreck of his intellectual 
powers, which he cannot utterly destroy, just so much of a higher 
nature that they are sins, and not instincts, belonging to the malig- 
nity of diabolic nature, rather than to the mere negative evil of the 
nature of brutes. 

4th. Faith may be described as reason leaning upon God. Without 
God, reason is either overpowered by sense and understanding, and, 
in a manner, overgrown, so that it cannot comprehend its proper 
truths ; or, being infinite, it cannot discover all the truths which 
concern it, and therefore needs a farther revelation to enlighten it. 
But with God's grace strengthening it to assert its supremacy over 
sense and understanding, and communicating to it what of itself it 
could not have discovered, it then having gained strength and light 
not its own, and doing and seeing consciously by God's help, becomes 
properly faith. 

-5th. Faith without reason, is not properly faith, but mere power 
worship ; and power worship may be devil worship ; for it is reason 
which entertains the idea of God — an idea essentially made up of 
truth and goodness, no less than of power. A sign of power exhibited 
to the senses might, through them, dispose the whole man to acknow- 
ledge it as divine ; yet power in itself is not divine, it may be devilish. 
But when reason recognises tliat, along with this power, there exist 
also wisdom and goodness, then it perceives that here is God ; and 
the worship which, without reason, might have been idolatry, being 
now according to reason is faith. 

6th. If this were considered, men would be more careful of speak- 



380 NOTES. 

ing disparagingly of reason, seeing that it is the necessary condition 
of the existence of faith. It is quite true, that when we have 
attained to faith, it supersedes reason ; we walk by sunlight, rather 
than by moonlight ; following the guidance of infinite reason, instead 
of finite. But how are we to attain to faith ? in other words, how 
can we distinguish God's voice from the voice of evil ? for we must 
distinguish it to be God's voice before we can have faith in it. We 
distinguish it, and can distinguish it no otherwise, by comparing it 
with that idea of God which reason intuitively enjoins, the gift of 
reason being God's original revelation of himself to man. Now, if 
the voice which comes to us from the unseen world agree not with 
this idea, we have no choice but to pronounce it not to be God's 
voice ; for no signs of power, in confirmation of it, can alone prove 
it to be God. God is not power only, but power, and truth, and 
holiness ; and the existence of even infinite power, does not necessa- 
rily involve in it truth and holiness also ; else the notion of the world 
being governed by an evil being would be no more than a contradic- 
tion in terms ; and the horrible strife of the two principles of Mani- 
cheism would be a mere matter of indifl'erence ; for if power alone 
constitutes God, whichever principle triumphed over the other, would 
become God by the very fact of its victory; and thus triumphant 
evil would be good. 

7th. Reason, then, is the mean whereby we attain to faith, and 
escape the devil worship of idolatry ; but the understanding is not 
a necessary condition of faith, and very often impedes it ; for the 
understanding having for its basis the reports of sense and experi- 
ence, has no direct way of arriving at things invisible, and rather 
shrinks back from that world with which it is in no way familiar. 
It has a work to do in regard to revelation, and an important work ; 
but divine things not being its proper matter, its work concerning 
them must be subordinate, and its tendency is always to fall back 
from the invisible to the visible, — from matters of faith to matters 
of experience. Its work, with respect to revelation, is this — that it 
should inquire into the truth of the outward signs of it ; which out- 
ward signs being necessarily things visible and sensible, fall within 
its province of judgment. Thus understanding judges the external 
witnesses of a revelation : if miracles be alleged, it is the business 
of understanding to ascertain the fact of their occurrence ; if a book 
claim to be the record of a revelation, it belongs to the understand- 
ing to make out the origin of this book, the time when it was written, 
who were its authors, and what is the first and grammatical meaning 



NOTES. 381 

of its language. Or, again, if any men profess to be the depositaries 
of divine truth, by an extraordinary commission from God, the 
understanding, being familiar with man's nature and motives, can 
judge of their credibility — can see whether there are any marks of 
folly in them, or of dishonesty, or whether they are at once sensible 
and honest. And in all such matters, the prerogative of the under- 
standing to judge is not to be questioned ; for all such points are 
strictly within its dominion ; and our Lord's words are of universal 
application, that we should render to Cassar the things which are 
Csesar's, no less than we should render to God the things that are 
God's. 

Faith may exist, as I said, without the action of the understanding, 
but never without that of the reason. It may exist independent of 
the understanding, because faith in God is the natural result of the 
idea of God : and that idea belongs to the reason, and the under- 
standing is not concerned with it. But when a special revelation 
has been given us, through human instruments ; when the under- 
standing is called in to certify the particular fact, that in such and 
such particular persons, writings, or events, God has made himself 
manifest in an extraordinary manner ; it is the human instrumen- 
tality which requires the judgment of the understanding ; the bringing 
in of human characters, and sensible facts, which are matters of 
sense and experience ; and, therefore, it is mere ignorance when 
Christians speak slightingly of the outward and historical evidences 
of Christianity, and indulge in very misplaced contempt for Paley and 
others who have worked out the historical proof of it. Such persons 
may observe, if they will, tnat where the historical evidence has not 
been listened to, there a belief in Christianity, properly so called, is 
wanting. Living examples might, I think, be named of men whose 
reason entirely acknowledges the internal proofs of a divine origin 
which are contained in the Christian doctrines, but whose under- 
standings are not satisfied as to tlie facts of the Christian history, 
and particularly as to the fact of our Lord's resurrection. Such men 
are a remarkable contrast to those whose understandings are fully 
satisfied of the historical truth of our Lord's resurrection, but who 
are indiiferent to, or actually deny, those doctrinal truths of which 
another power than the understanding must be the warrant. It is 
important to observe, therefore, that in a revelation involving, as an 
essential part of it, certain historical facts, there is necessarily a call 
for the judgment of the understanding, although in religious faith 
simply the understanding may have no place. 



382 NOTES. 

8th. Now, then, the clearest notion which can be given of ration- 
alism would, I think, be this ; that it is the abuse of tlie understand- 
ing; in subjects where the divine and the human, so to speak, are 
intermino;led. Of human things the understanding can judge, of 
divine things it cannot; — and thus, where the two are mixed 
together, its inability to judge of the one part makes it derange the 
proportions of both, and the judgment of the whole is vitiated. For 
example, the understanding examines a miraculous history ; it 
judges truly of what I may call the human part of the case ; that is 
to say, of the rarity of miracles, — of the fallibility of human testi- 
mony, — of the proneness of most minds to exaggeration, — and of the 
critical arguments affecting the genuineness or the date of the narra- 
tive itself. But it forgets the divine part, namely, the power and 
providence of God, that He is really ever present amongst us, and 
that the spiritual world, which exists invisibly all around us, may 
conceivably, and by no means impossibly, exist, at some times and 
to some persons, even visibly. These considerations, which the 
understanding is ignorant of, would often modify our judgment as 
to the human parts of the case. Things not impossible in themselves 
are believed upon sufficient testimony ; and with all the carelessness 
and exaggeration of historians, the mass of history is notwithstanding 
generally credible. Again, with regard to the history of the Old 
Testament, our judgment of the human part in it requires to be 
constantly modified by our consciousness of the divine part, or other- 
wise it cannot fail to be rationalistic ; that is, it will be the judgment 
of the understanding only, unehecked^by the reason. Gesenius' 
Commentary on Isaiah is rationalistic, for it regards Isaiah merely as 
a Jewish writer, zealously attached to the religion of his country, 
and lamenting the decay of his nation, and anxiously looking for its 
future restoration. No doubt Isaiah was all this, and therefore 
Gesenius' Commentary is critically and historically very valuable ; 
the human part of Isaiah is nowhere better illustrated ; but the 
divine part of the prophecy of Isaiah is no less real, and the con- 
sciousness of its existence should actually qualify our feelings and 
language even with reference to the human part. 

9th, The fault, then, of rationalism appears to me to consist not so 
much in what it has as in what it has not. The understanding has 
its proper work to do with respect to the Bible, because the Bible 
consists of human writings and contains a human history. Critical 
and historical inquiries respecting it are, therefore, perfectly legiti- 
mate ; it contains matter which is within the province of the under- 



NOTES. 383 

standing, and the understanding has God's warrant for doing that 
work which he appointed it to do ; only, let us remember, that the 
understanding cannot ascend to things divine ; that for these another 
faculty is necessary, — reason or faith. If this faculty be living in 
us, then there can be no rationalism ; and what is called so is then 
no other than the voice of Christian truth. AYhere a man's writings 
show that he is keenly alive to the divine part of Scripture, that he 
sees God ever in it, and regards it truly as his word, his judgments 
of the human part in it are not likely to be rationalistic ; and if his 
understanding decides according to its own laws, upon points within 
its own province, while his faith duly tempers it, and restrains it 
from venturing upon another's dominion, the result will, in all 
probability, be such as commonly attends the use of God's manifold 
gifts in their just proportions, — it will image, after our imperfect 
measure, the holiness of God and the truth of God. 

It is very true, and should be acknowledged in the fullest manner, 
that for the study of the highest moral and spiritual questions 
another faculty than the understanding is wanting ; and that with- 
out this faculty the understanding alone cannot arrive at truth. But 
it is no less true, that while there is, on the one side, a faculty higher 
than the understanding, which is entitled to pronounce upon its 
defects ; "for he that is spiritual judgeth all things," [waxplvsc ;) so 
there is a clamour often raised against it, not from above, but from 
below, — the clamour of mere shallowness and ignorance, and passion. 
Of this sort is some of the outcry which is raised against rationalism. 
Men do not leap, per saltum moriakm, from ordinary folly to divine 
wisdom : and the foolish have no right to think that they are angels, 
because they are not humanly wise. There is a deep and universal 
truth in St. Paul's words, where he says, that Christians wish " not 
to be unclothed but clothed upon, that mortality may be swallowed 
up of life." Wisdom is gained, not by renouncing or despising the 
understanding, but by adding to its perfect work the perfect work 
of reason, and of reason's perfection, faith. 



Note I. P. 331. 

"J. famous example of this may he seen in tlie sixth chapter of St. 
John," &c. — The interpretation of this chapter, and particularly of 
the part alluded to in the text, is of no small importance ; for it is 
remarkable, that the highest notions with respect to the presence of 



384 NOTES. 

our Lord in the Holy Communion are often grounded upon this 
passage in St. John's Gospel, which yet, in the judgment of others, 
most decisively repels them. 

The whole question resolves itself into this — Are our Lord's words 
in this place co-ordinate with the Holy Communion, or subordinate 
to it? That is, do they and the communion alike point to some 
great truth superior to them both : or do our Lord's words, in St. 
John, point to the communion itself as their highest meaning? 

The communion itself expresses a truth above itself by a symboli- 
cal action ; the words of our Lord, in St. John, are exactly the same 
with that symbolic action ; it is natural, therefore, to understand 
them not as referring to it, but to the same^ higher truth to which it 

^ The common tendency to make the Christian sacraments an ultimate end 
rather than a mean, is exhibited in the heading of the tenth chapter of the 
1st Epistle to the Corinthians, in our authorized version, where we find the 
first verses described as stating, that " the Jews* sacraments were types of 
ours." Whereas, so far is it from the apostle's argument to represent our 
sacraments as the reality of which the Jews' sacraments were the type, that 
he is describing theirs and ours as co-ordinate with each other, and both alike 
subordinate to the same truth; and he argues, that if the Jews, with their 
sacraments, did notwithstanding lose the reality which those sacraments typified, 
so we should take heed lest we, with our sacraments, should lose it also. The 
erroneous heading is not given in the Geneva Bible, where we have, on the 
contrary, the true observation ; " the sacraments of the old fathers were all 
one with ours, for thej^ respected Christ only." It is true that if no more were 
meant than that "the Jews' sacraments were like ours," there would be no reason 
to object to the expression; but apparently more is meant, as the word type 
seems to imply that what it is compared with is the reality, of which it is 
itself only the image; and one thing cannot properly be called the type of 
another, when both are but types of the same third thing. But the divines of 
James the First's reign and of his son's, were to the reformers exactly what 
the so-called fathers were to the apostles : the very same tendencies, growing 
up even in Elizabeth's reign, becoming strengthened under the Stuart kings, 
and fully developed in the nonjurors, which distinguish the divines of the 
seventeenth century from those of the sixteenth, distinguish also the church 
system from the gospel. There are many who readily acknowledge this 
difference in the English church, while they would deny it in the case of the 
ancient church. Indeed, it is not yet deemed prudent to avow openly that 
they prefer the so-called fathers to the apostles, and therefore they try to 
persuade themselves that both speak the same language. And doubtless, if 
the Scriptures are to be interpreted according to the rule of the writers of the 
third, and fourth, and fifth centuries, the thing can easily be effected ; as, by 
a similar process, the Articles of the Church of England, if interpreted accord- 
ing to the rule of the nonjurors and their successors, might be made to speak 
the very sentiments which their authors designed to condemn. 



NOTES. 385 

refers also : and the more so as the communion is not once mentioned 
by St. John either in his Gospel or in his Epistles ; but the idea 
which the communion expresses appears to have been familiar to his 
mind ; at least, if we suppose that his mention of the blood and water 
flowing from our Lord's side in his Gospel, and his allusion again to 
the same fact in his Epistle, have reference in any degree to it, which 
seems to me most probable. 

Our Lord repels the notion of a literal acceptation of his words, 
where he says, — "It is the Spirit which profiteth, the flesh profiteth 
nothing; the words which I speak unto you, they are Spirit and 
they are life." It seems impossible, therefore, to refer these words, 
which he tells us expressly are Spirit and life, to any outward act 
of eating and drinking as their highest truth and object. 

But the words in the sixth chapter of St. John do highly illustrate 
the institution and purpose of the communion, and especially the 
remarkable words which our Lord used in instituting it. They show 
what infinite importance he attached to that truth which he expressed 
both in symbolical words and action under the same figure, of eating 
His body and drinking His blood. But to suppose that that truth 
can only be realized by one particular ritual action, so that the one 
great work of a Christian is to receive the Lord's supper, — which it 
must be, if our Lord's words in the sixth chapter of St. John refer 
to the communion, — is so contrary to the whole character of our 
Lord's teaching, and not least so in the very words so misinterpreted, 
that to maintain such a doctrine, leading, as it does, to such manifold 
superstitions, is actually to preach another Gospel than Christ's — to 
bring in a mystical religion instead of a spiritual one, — to do worse 
than to Judaize. 



Note K. P. 345. 

" A set of persons, who wish to magnify the uncertainties of the 
Scripture in order to recommend more plausibly the guidance of some 
supposed authoritative interpreter of it^ — " The high church party," 
we have been lately told, " take Holy Scripture for their guide, and, 
in the interpretation of it, defer to the authority of primitive 
antiquity : the low church party contend for the sufficiency of private 
judgment." It is become of the greatest importance to see clearly, 
not what one party, or another, may contend for, but what is the 
real truth, and what, accordingly, is the duty of every Christian man 
33 



386 NOTES. 

to do in this matter. The sermon to which this note refers, is an 
attempt to show that Scripture it aot hopelessly obscure or ambigu- 
ous ; but it may not be inexpeulont here to consider a little, what 
are the objections to the principle of the high church party ; to clear 
away certain difficulties which are supposed to beset the opposite 
principle ; and to state, if possible, what the truth of the whole 
question is. 

I. The objections to the principle of the high church party are 
these : 1st. Its extreme vagueness. Yv^hat is primitive antiquity ? 
and where is its authority to be found ? Does " primitive antiquity'^ 
mean the first three centuries ? or the first two ? or the first five ? or 
the first seven? Does it include any of the general councils? or 
one of them? or four? or six? Are Irenreus and TertuUian the 
latest writers of " primitive antiquity V or does it end with Augus- 
tine? or does it comprehend the venerable Bede? One writer has 
lately told us, that our Reformers wished the people to be taught, 
"that, for almost seven hundred years, the church was most pure." 
Are we, then, to hold that " primitive antiquity" embraces a period 
of nearly seven centuries ? Seven centuries are considerably more 
than a third part of the whole duration of the church, from its foun- 
dation to this hour : can the third part of a nation's history be called 
its primitive antiquity? Is a tenet, or a practice taught when 
Christianity had been more than six hundred years in the world, to 
be called primitive? We know not, then, in the first place, what 
length of time is signified by " primitive antiquity." 

But let it signify any length of time we choose, I ask, next, where 
is its authority to be found ? In the decisions of the general coun- 
cils? But if we call the first four centuries "primitive autiquity," 
we find in this period only two general councils ; if we include the 
fifth century, we get four ; if we take in the sixth and seventh cen- 
turies, we have then, in all, six general councils. Will the decisions 
of any, or all, of these six councils furnish us with an authoritative 
interpretation of Scripture ? They give us the Nicene and the Con- 
stantinopolitan creeds ; they condemn various notions with respect 
to the person of our Lord, and to some other points of belief; and 
they contain a variety of regulations for the discipline and order of 
the church ; but, with the exception of some particular passages, 
there is no authority in the creeds, or canons, or anathema.s of these 
councils, for the interpretation of Scripture ; they leave its difficulties 
just where they were before. It is but little then, which the first 



NOTES. 387 

six general councils vrill do towards providing the student of Scrip- 
ture with an infallible standard of interpretation. 

Where, however, except in the councils, can wo find any thing 
claimini"; to be the voice of the church ? Neither individual writers, 
nor yet all the writers of the first seven centuries together, can 
properly be called the church. They form, even altogether, but a 
limited number of individuals, who, in difi"erent countries, and at 
difi'erent periods, expressed, in writing, their own sentiments, but 
without any public authority. Origen, one of the ablest and most 
learned of them all, was anathematized by the second council of 
Constantinople ; Tertullian was heretical during a part of his life ; 
Lactantius was taxed with heterodoxy. IIow are we to know who 
were sor-nd ? And if sound generally, that is to say, if they stand 
charged with no heretical error, yet it does not follow that a man is 
infallible because ho is not heretical ; and none of these writers have 
been distinguished like the five great Roman lawyers whom the 
edict of Theodosius' selected from the mass, and gave to their de- 
cisions a legal authority. Or again, if it be said that the agreement 
of the great majority of them is to be regarded as decisive, we 
answer, that as no individual amongst them is in himself an au- 
thority legally, so neither can any number of them be so ; and if a 
moral authority only be meant, such as we naturally ascribe to the 
concurring judgment of many eminent men, then this is a totally 
different question, and is open to inquiry in every separate case ; for 
as, on the one hand, no one denies that such a concurring judgment 
is an authority, yet, on the other hand, it may be outweighed, either 
by the -^vorth of the few who differ from the judgment, or by the 
reason of the case itself; and the concurring judgment of the ma- 
jority may show no more than the force of a general prejudice, which 
only a very few individuals were sensible enough to resist. 

In fact, it would greatly help to clear this question if we under- 
stand what we mean by allowing, or denying, the authority of the 
so-called fathers. The term authoriiy is ambiguous, and according 
to the sense iu which I use it, I should either acknowledge it or 
deny it. — The writers of the first four, or of the first seven centuries, 
have an authority, just as the scholiasts and ancient commentators 
have: some of them, and in some points, are of weight singly; the 



rors 
426. 



Cod. Theodos. lib. i. tit. iv. The edict is issued in the name of the empe- 
Theodosius (the younger) and Valectinian (the younger), in the year a.d. 



888 NOTES. 

agreement of many of them has much weight ; the agreement of 
almost all of them -would have great weight. In this sense, I ac- 
knowledge their authority ; and it would be against all sound prin- 
ciples of criticism to deny it. But if, by authority, is meant a de- 
cisive authority, a judgment which may not be questioned, then 
the claim of authority in such a case, for any man, or set of men, is 
either a folly or a revelation. Such an authority is not human, but 
divine : if any man pretends to possess it, let him show God's clear 
warrant for his pretension, or he must be regarded as a deceiver or 
a madman. 

But it may be said, that an authority not to be questioned was 
conferred, by the Roman law, on the opinions of a certain number 
of groat lawyers: if a judge believed that their interpretation of the 
law was erroneous, he yet was not at liberty to follow his own 
private judgment in departing from it. "Why may not the same 
thing be allowed in the church ? and why may not the interpreta- 
tions of Cyprian, or Athanasius, or Augustine, or Chrysostom, be as 
decisive, with respect to the true sense of the Scripture, as those of 
Gains, Paulus, Modestinus, Ulpian, and Papinian, were acknow- 
ledged to be with respect to the sense of the Roman law ? 

The answer is, that the emperor's edict could absolve the judge 
from following his own convictions about the sense of the law, 
because it gave to the authorized interpretation the force of law. 
The text, as the judge interpreted it, was a law repealed; the com- 
ment of the great lawyers was now the law in its room. As a mere 
literary composition, he might interpret it rightly, and Gains, or 
Papinian, might be wrong ; but if his interpretation was ever so 
right grammatically or critically, yet, legally it was nothing to the 
purpose : — Gaius's interpretation had superseded it, and was not the 
law which he was bound to obey. But, in the church, the only 
point to be aimed at is the discovery of the true meaning of the text 
of the divine law: no human power can invest the comment with 
equal authority. The emperor said, and might say to his judges, 
" You need not consider what was the meaning of the decemvirs, 
when they wrote the twelve tables, or, of Aquillius, when he drew 
up the Aquillian law. The law for you is not what the decemvirs 
may have meant, but what their interpreters may have meant : the 
decemvirs' meaning, if it was their meaning, is no longer the law of 
Rome." But who can dare to say to a Christian, " You need not 
Consider what was the meaning of our Lord and his apostles; the 
law for you now is the meaning of Cyprian, or Ambrose, or Chry- 



NOTES. - 389 

Fostom ; — that meaning has superseded the meaning of Christ/' 
A Christiiin must find out Christ's meaning, and believe that he has 
found it, or else he must still seek for it. It is a matter, not of out- 
ward submisssion, but of inward faith ; and if in our inward mind 
we are persuaded that the interpreter has mistaken our Lord's 
meaning, how can we by possibility adopt that interpretation in 
faith ? 

Here we come to a grave consideration — that this doctrine of an 
infallible rule of interpretation may suit ignorance or scepticism : it 
is death to a sincere and reasonable and earnest faith. It is not 
hard for a sceptical mind to deceive itself by saying, that it receives 
whatever the church declares to be true : it may receive any number 
of doctrines, but it will not really believe them. "We may restrain 
our tongues from disputing them, we may watch every restless 
thought that would question them, and instantly, by main force, as 
it were, put it down ; but all this time our minds do not assimilate 
to them ; they do not take them up into their own nature, so as to 
make them a part of themselves, freshening and supplying the life- 
blood of their very being. Truth must be believed by the mind's 
own act ; our souls must be drawn towards it with a reasonable 
love ; some affinity there must be between it and them, or else they 
can never really comprehend it. The sceptic may desperately 
become a fanatic also, but he is not become, therefore, a believer. 

Authority cannot compel belief; the sceptic who knows not what 
it is to grasp anything with the firm grasp of faith, may mistake his 
acquiescence in a doctrine for belief in it; the ignorant and careless, 
who believe only what their senses tell them, may lay up the words 
of divine truth in their memory, may repeat them loudly, and be 
vehement against all who question them. But minds to which faith 
is a necessity, which cannot be contented to stand by the side of 
truth, but must become altogether one with it, — minds which know 
full well the difference betv/een opinon and conviction, between not 
questioning and believing, — they, when their own action is super- 
seded by an authority foreign to themselves, are in a condition which 
they find intolerable. Told to believe what they cannot believe ; 
told that they ought not to believe what they feel most disposed to 
believe ; they retire altogether from the region of divine truth, a^ 
from a spot tainted with moral death, and devote themselves to other 
subjects; to physical science, it may be, or to political; where the 
inherent craving of their nature may yet be gratified, where, how- 
ever insignificant the truth may be, they mav yet find some truth to 

33* 



390 NOTES. 

believe. This has been the condition of too many great men in the 
church of Rome ; and it accounts for that bitterness of feeling with 
which Machiavelli, and others like him, appear to have regarded the 
whole subject of Christianity. 

The system, then, of deferring to the authority of what is called 
the ancient church in the interpretation of Scripture, is impracti- 
cable, inasmuch as, with regard to the greatest part of the Scripture, 
the church, properly speaking, has said nothing at all ; and if it were 
practicable, it would be untenable, because neither the old councils, 
nor individual writers, could give any sign that they had a divine 
gift of interpretation ; and if such a gift had been given to them, it 
would have been equivalent to a new revelation, the sense of the 
comment being thus preferred to what we could not but believe to be 
the sense of the text. Above all, the system is destructive of faith, 
having a tendency to substitute passive acquiescence for real convic- 
tion ; and therefore I should not say that the excess of it was popery^ 
but that it had once and actually those characters of evil which we 
sometimes express by the term popery, but which may be better sig- 
nified by the term idolatry ; a reverence for that which ought not to 
be reverenced, leading to a want of faith in that which is really de- 
serving of all adoration and love. 

II. But it is said that the system of relying on private judgment 
is beset by no less evils : that it is itself inconsistent, and leads to 
Socinianism and Rationalism, and, in the end, to utter unbelief; so 
that, the choice being only between two evils, men may choose the 
system of church authority as being the less evil of the two. If this 
■were so, I see not how faith could be attained at all, or what place 
would be left for Christian truth. But the system of the Church of 
England^ is, I am persuaded, fully consistent, and has no tendency 

' Much has been lately written to show that the Church of England allows 
the authority of the ancient councils and writers, and does not allow the right 
of private judgment. But it is perfectly clear, from the 21st Article, that it 
does not allow the authority of councils ; that is to say, it holds that a coun- 
cil's exposition of doctrine may be false, and that such an exposition is of no 
force " unless it may be declared that it be taken out of Holy Scripture." 
Who, then, is to declare this ? for to suppose that the declaration of the coun- 
cil itself is meant is absurd : the answer, I imagine, would be, according to 
the mind of the Reformers, " Every particular or national church," and es- 
pecially the King as the head of the church. They would not have allowed 
private judgment, because they conceived that a private person had nothing to 
do but to obey the government; nnd it was for the government to dcterniino 
what the truth of Scripture was. The Church of England, then, expressly 



NOTES. 391 

either to Socinianism or Rationalism. Let us see first what that 
system is. 

It is invidiously described as maintaining " the sufficiency of pri- 
vate judgment.'' Now vre maintain the sufficiency of private judg- 
ment in interpreting the Scriptures in no other sense that that in 
which every sane man maintains its sufficiency, in interpreting Thu- 
cydides or Aristotle ; we mean, that, instead of deferring always to 
some one interpreter, as an idle boy follows implicitly the Latin ver- 

disclaims the authority of councils, and, in its official instruments, it neither 
allows nor condemns private judgment ; but the opinions of the Reformers, 
and the constitution of the church in the 16th century, were certainly against 
private judgment : their authority for the interpretation of Scripture was un- 
doubtedly the supreme government of the church, i. e. not the bishops, but 
the King and parliament. But then this had respect not to the power of dis- 
cerning truth, but to the right of publishing it, which is an wholly different 
question. That an individual was not bound in foro conscientice to admit the 
truth of any interpretation of Scripture which did not approve itself to his 
own mind, was no less the judgment of the Church of England than that if he 
publicly disputed the interpretation of the church, he might be punished as 
unruly and a despiser of government. But then it should ever be remembered 
that the church, with the Reformers, was not the clergy. And now that the 
right of publication is conceded by the church, it is quite just to say that the 
Church of England allows private judgment ; and if that judgment differ from 
her own, she condemns not the act of judging at all, but the having come to 
a false conclusion. 

It is urged that the act of 1 Elizabeth, c. 1, allows that to be heresy which 
the first four councils determined to be so. This is true; but it also adjudges 
to be heresy whatever shall be hereafter declared to be so by "the high court 
of parliament, with the assent of the clergy in their convocation." The 
Church of England undoubtedly allowed the decisions of the first four coun- 
cils, in matters of doctrine, to be valid, as it allowed the three creeds, because 
it decided that they were agreeable to Scripture ; but the binding authority 
was that of the English Parliament, not of the councils of Nicaea or Constan- 
tinople. 

As to the canon of 1571, which allows preacliers to teach nothing as reli- 
gious truth but what is agreeable to the Scriptures, "and which the catholic 
fathers and ancient bishops have collected from that very doctrine of Scrip- 
ture," it will be observed that it is merely negative, and does not sanction the 
teaching of the " catholic fathers and ancient bishops," generally, or say that 
men shall teach what they taught; but that they shall not teach as matter of 
religious faith, a new deduction from Scripture of their own making, but such 
truths as had been actually deduced from Scripture before, namely, the great 
articles of the Cbristian faith. Farther, the canons of 1571 are of no autho- 
rity, not having received the royal assent. — Sec Stryjit's Life of Purler, p. 
322, ed. 1711. 



392 NOTES. 

siou of his Greek lesson, the true method is to consult all^ accessible 
authorities, and to avail ourselves of the assistance of all. And we 
contend, that, by this process, as we discover, for the most part, the 
true meaninc:; of Thucydides and Aristotle with undoubted certainty, 
so we may also discover, not, indeed, in every particular part or pas- 
sage, but generally, the true meaning of the Holy Scriptures with no 
less certainty. 

But if another man maintains that a different meaning is the true 
one, how are we to silence him, and how are we justified in calling 
him a heretic ? If by the term heretic we are to imply moral guilt, 
I am not justified in applying it to any Christian, unless his doctrines 
are positively sinful, or there is something wicked, either in the wny 
of dishonesty or bitterness, in his manner of maintaining them. The 
guilt of any given religious error, in any particular case, belongs 
only to the judgment of Him who reads the heart. But if we mean 
by heresy " a grave error in matters of the Christian fiiith, over- 
throwing or corrupting some fundamental article of it," then we are 
as fully justified in calling a gross misinterpretation of Scripture 
" heresy," as we should be justified in calling a gross misinterpreta- 
tion of a profane Greek or Latin author, ignorance, or want of 
scholarship. There is no infallible authority in points of grammar 
and criticism, yet men do speak confidently, notwithstanding, as to 
learning and ignorance ; Person and Herman are known to have un- 
derstood their business, and a writer who were to set their decisions 
at defiance, and to indulge in mere extravagances of interpretation, 
would be set down as one who knew nothing about the matter. So 
we judge daily in all points of literature and science ; nay, we in the 
same manner venture to call some persons mad, and on the strength 
of our conviction we deprive them of their property, and shut them 
up in a madhouse : yet if madmen were to insist that they were 
sane, and that we were mad, I know not to what infallible authority 
we could appeal ; and, after all, what are we to do with those who 
deny that authority to be infallible ? we must then go to another in- 
fallible authority to guarantee the infallibility of the first, and this 
process will run on for ever. 

But, in truth, there is more in the matter than the being justified 

' Of course no reasonable man can doubt tbe importance of studying the 
early Christian writers, as illustrating not only the history of their own times, 
but the New Testament also. For the Old Testament, indeed, they do little 
or nothing, and for the New they are of much less assistance than might have 
been expected; but still there is no doubt that they are often useful. 



NOTES. 393 

or not justified in calling our neighbour a heretic. The real point 
of anxiety, I imagine, with many good and thinking men is this : 
whether a reasonable belief can be fiiirly carried through ; whether 
the notion of the all-sufficiency of Scripture is not liable to objec- 
tions no less than the system of church-authority ; whether, in short, 
our Christian faith can be consistently maintained without a mortal 
leap at some part or other of the process ; nay, whether, in fact, if it 
were otherwise, our faith would not seem to stand rather on the wis- 
dom of man than on the power of God. 

I use these words, because these and other such passages of the 
Scripture are often quoted as I have now quoted them, and produce 
a great effect on those who do not observe that they are quoted inap- 
plicably ; for the question is not between man's wisdom and God's 
power, but simply whether we have reason to believe that God's 
power has been here manifested ; or, rather, to see whether we can- 
not give a reason for the faith which is in us, such faith resting upon 
God's power and wisdom as manifested in Christ Jesus ; for if no 
reason can be rendered for our faith, then our rainds, so far as they 
are concerned, are believing a lie ; they are believing in spite of 
those laws by which God has determined their nature and condition. 

Yet, however we believe, blindly or reasonably, (for some men, by 
God's mercy, are accidentally, as it were, in possession of the truth, 
the falsehood of their own minds in holding it not being, it is to be 
hoped, imputed to them as a sin ;) however we believe, I never mean 
to say that our faith is not God's gift, to be sought for and retained 
by constant prayer and watchfulness, and to be forfeited by careless- 
ness or sin. That is no true faith in which reason does not accord ; 
yet neither can reason alone and without God ever become perfected 
into faith. For although intellectually, the grounds of belief may 
be made out satisfactorily, yet we are not able to follow our pure 
reason by ourselves ; and no work on the evidences of Christianity 
can by itself give us faith ; and much less can amid the manifold 
conflicts of life maintain it. That faith is thus the gift of God, and 
not our own work, I would desire to feel as keenly and continually, 
as with the fullest conviction I acknowledge it. 

Now, to resume the consideration of that which, as I said, is the 
real point of anxiety with many. They doubt whether the course 
of a reasonable belief can be held to the end without interruptions : 
thoy say that the received notions of the inspiration, and conse- 
quently of the complete truth of the Scriptures cannot reasonably be 
maintained ; that he who does maintain them does so by a happy 



394 NOTES. 

inconsistency; — he is to be congratulated for not following up his 
own principles ; but why should he then find fault with" others Avho 
do that avowedly and consistently to which he is driven against his 
professions by the clear necessity of the case? 

This argument was pressed by Mr. Newman, some time since, in 
one of the Tracts for the Times ; and it was conducted, as may be 
supposed, with great ingenuity, but with a recklessness of conse- 
quences, or an ignorance of mankind, truly astonishing ; for he 
brought forward all the difficulties and differences which can be 
found in the Scripture narratives, displayed them in their most 
glaring form, and merely observed, that as those with whom he was 
arguing could not solve these difficulties, but yet believed the Scrip- 
tures no less in spite of them, so the apparent unreasonableness of 
his doctrine about the priesthood was no ground why it should be 
rejected — a method 'of argument most blameable in any Christian to 
adopt towards his brethren ; for what if their faith, being thus vehe- 
mently strained, were to give way under the experiment? and if, 
being convinced that the Scriptures were not more reasonable than 
Mr. Newman's system, they were to end with believing, not both, 
but neither ? 

Therefore the question is one of no small anxiety and interest; 
and it is not idly nor wantonly that we must speak the truth upon 
it, even if that truth may to some seem startling ; for by God's bless- 
ing, if we do go boldly forward wherever truth shall lead us, our 
course needs not be interrupted, neither shall a single hair of our 
faith perish. 

The same laws of criticism which teach us to distinguish between 
various degrees of testimony, authorize us to assign the very highest 
rank to the evidences of the writings of St. John and St. Paul. If 
belief is to be given to any human compositions, it is due to these ; 
yet if we believe these merely as human compositions, and without 
assuming anything as to their divine inspiration, our Christian faith, 
as it seems to me, is reasonable ; — not merely the facts of our Lord's 
miracles and resurrection; but Christian faith, in all its fulness — 
the whole dispensation of the Spirit, the revelation of the redemption 
of man and of the Di\dne Persons who are its authors — of all that 
Christian faith, and hope, and love can need. And this is so true, 
that even without reckoning the Epistle to the Hebrews amongst St. 
Paul's writings, — nay, even if we choose to reject the three pastoral 



is'OTi-:s. 395 

epistles' — yet taking only what neither has been nor can be doubted 
— the episiles to the Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, 
Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians, we have in these, to- 
gether with St. John's Gospel and First Epistle, — giving up, if we 
choose, the other two, — a ground on which our faith may stand for 
ever, according to the strictest rules of the understanding, according 
to the clearest intuitions of reason. 

I take the works of St. John and St, Paul as cur foundation, be- 
cause, in the first place, we find in them the historical basis of 
Christianity ; that is to say, we find the facts of our Lord's miracles, 
and especially of his resurrection, and the miraculous powers after- 
wards continued to the church, established by the highest possible 
evidence. However pure and truly divine the principles taught in 
the gospel may be, yet we crave to know not only that we were in 
need of redemption, but that a Redeemer has actually appeared ; not 
only that a resurrection to eternal life is probable, but that such a 
resurrection has actually taken place. This basis of historical fact, 
which is one of the great peculiarities of Christianity, is strictly 
within the cognizance of the understanding ; and in the writings of 
St. John and St. Paul we have that full and perfect evidence of it 
which the strictest laws of the understanding require. 

But the historical truth being once warranted by the understand- 
ing, other faculties of our nature now come in to enjoy it, and de- 
velop it ; the highest reason and the moral and spiritual affections 
find respectively their proper field and objects, which, whenever 
presented to them in vision or in theory, they must instinctively 
cling to, but to which they now abandon themselves without fear of 
disappointment, because the understanding has assured them of 
their reality. We must suppose, on any system, the existence of 
reason and spiritual affections as indispensable to the understanding 
of the Scriptures ; external authority can do nothing for us without 
these, any more than the mere faculties of the common understand- 
ing. But with these we apprehend the view which St. John and St. 
Paul aiford to us ; it opens before us one truth after another, one 
glory after another. St. John evidently supposes that his readers 
were familiar with another account of our Lord's life and teaching ; 
and we find accordingly, another account existing in the writings of 
the three other evangelists. One and the same account is manifestly 

' I say this, not as having the slightest doubt myself of the genuineness of 
any one of the three, but merely to show how much is left that has not been 
questioned at all, even unreasonably. 



396 NOTES. 

the substance of their three narratives, to which they thus bear a 
triple testimony, because none of the three has merely transcribed 
the others, and none of them apparently was the original author of 
it. Thus having now the full record of our Lord's teaching, we find 
that he everywhere refers to the Old Testament as to the word of 
God, and the record of God's earlier manifestations of himself to 
man. He has cleared up those especial points in it which might 
have most perplexed us, as I shall notice more fully hereafter, and 
he represents himself as the perpetual subject of its prophecies. We 
thus receive the Old Testament, as it were, from his hand, and learn 
while sitting at his feet to understand the lessons of the law and the 
prophets. 

Thus we ruake Christ the centre of both Testaments, and by so 
doing, we cannot be blind to the divinity pervading both. For the 
amazing fact that God should come into the world and be in the 
world cannot by possibility stand alone ; it hallows, as it were, the 
whole period of the world's existence, from the beginning to the end, 
placing all time and every place in relation to God ; it disposes us at 
once to receive the fact of the special call of the people of Israel ; — 
it gives, I had almost said, an a priori reason why there must have 
been in earlier times some shadows, at least, or images, to represent 
dimly to former generations that great thing which they were not 
actually to witness ; it leads us to believe that there must have been 
some prophetic voices to announce the future coming of the Lord, or 
else " The very stones must have cried out.'' 

But those writings of St. John and St. Paul which were our first 
lessons in Christianity, and those other accounts of our Lord's life 
and teaching to which they introduced us, — can we conceive it pos- 
sible, that the real meaning of all these shall be hopelessly obscure 
and uncertain ; that if we seek it ever so diligently, we shall not find 
it? With an humble mind ready to learn, with a heart fully im- 
pressed with the sense of God's presence, so as to be morally and 
spiritually in a condition to receive God's truth, can we believe, then, 
that the use of those intellectual means, which open to us certainly 
the sense of human writers, shall be applied in vain to those writers 
who were commissioned to be the very heralds of a divine message, 
whose especial business it was to make known what they had them- 
selves heard? Surely if a sufficient certainty of interpretation be 
attainable in common literature, the revelation of God cannot be the 
solitary exception. 

But we may be mistaken : we may believe that we interpret truly. 



NOTES. 397 

but -^ve cannot be infalUhhj sure of it ; we want an authority which 
shall give us this assurance. This is no doubt the natural craving 
of our weakness ; but it is no wiser a craving than if we were to long 
for the heaven to be opened, and for a daily sight of our Lord stand- 
ing at the right hand of God. To live by faith is our appointed 
condition, and faith excludes an infiillible assurance. We must 
earnestly believe that we have the truth, and die for our belief, if 
necessary, but we cannot know it. No device which the human 
mind can practise, can exclude the possibility of doubt. If we would 
find an armour which should cover us at every point from this subtle 
enemy, it would be an armour that would close up the pores of the 
skin, and stop our breath ; our fancied security would kill us. It is 
really possible that, with our knowledge of man's nature, our belief 
in any human authority can really be more free from doubt than our 
belief in the conclusions of our own reason ? There must ever be the 
liability to uncertainty ; we can put no moral truth so surely as that 
our minds shall always feel it to be absolutely certain. Where is 
the infallible authority that can assure us even of the existence of 
God ? And will the scepticism that can believe its own conclusions in 
nothing else -rest satisfied with one conclusion only — that the writers 
of the first four centuries cannot err ? Surely to regard this as the 
most certain proposition that can be submitted to the human mind, 
is no better than insanity. 

But we will consent to trust, it may be said, with God's help, to 
our own deliberate convictions that we have interpreted Scripture 
truly; but you tell us that the Scripture itself is not inspired in 
every part; you tell us that there are in it chronological and his- 
torical difficulties, if not errors ; that there are possibly some inter- 
polations ; that even the apostles may have been in some things 
mistaken, as in their belief that the end of the world was at hand. 
Where shall we find a rest for our feet, if you first take away from 
us our infallible interpreter, and now tell us, that even if v/e can 
ourselves interpret it aright, yet that we cannot be sure that the very 
Scripture itself is infallibly true ? 

It is very true that our position with respect to the Scriptures is 
not in all points the same as our fathers'. For sixteen hundred 
years nearly, while physical science, and history, and chronology, 
and criticism, were all in a state of torpor, the questions which now 
present themselves to our minds could not from the nature of the 
case arise. When they did arise, they came forward into notice 
gradually: first the discoveries in astronomy excited uneasiness: 

34 



398 - NOTES. 

then as men began to read more critically, differences in the several 
Scripture narratives of the same thing awakened attention ; moro 
lately, the greater knowledge which has been gained of history, and 
of language, and in all respects the more careful inquiry to which all 
ancient records have been submitted, have brought other difficulties 
to light, and some sort of answer must be given to them. Mr. New- 
man, as we have seen, has made use of these difficulties much as the 
Romanists have used the doctrine of the Trinity when arguing with 
Trinitarians^ in defence of transubstantiation. The Romanists said, 
— " Here are all these inexplicable difficulties in the doctrine of the 
Trinity, and yet you believe it." So Mr. Newman argues with those 
who hold the plenary inspiration of Scripture, that if they believe 
that, in spite of all the difficulties which beset it, they may as well 
believe his doctrine of the priesthood ; and many, if I mistake not, 
alarmed by this representation, have actually embraced his opinions. 

It has unfortunately happened that the difficulties of the Scripture 
have been generally treated as objections to the truth of Christi- 
anity ; as such they have been pressed by adversaries, and as such 
Christian writers have replied to them. But then they become of 
such trcmendons interest, that it is scarcely possible to examine them 
fairly. If my faith in God and my hope of eternal life is to depend 
on the accuracy of a date or of some minute historical particular, 
who can wonder that I should listen to any sophistry that may be 
used in defence of them, or that I should force my mind to do any 
sort of violence to itself, when life and death seem to hang on the 
issue of its decision ? 

Yet what conceivable connexion is there between the date of Cyre- 
nius's government, or the question whether our Lord healed a blind 

* On this proceeding of the Romanists, Stillingfleet observes, " Methinks for 
the sake of our common Christianity you should no more venture upon such 
bold and unreasonable comparisons. Do you In earnest think it is all one 
whether men do believe a God, or providence, or heaven, or hell, or the 
Trinity, and incarnation of Christ, if they do not believe transubstantiation? 
We have heard much of late about old and n^^w popery : but if this be the 
way of representing new popery, by exposing the common articles of faith, it 
will set the minds of all good Christians farther from it than ever. For upon 
the very same grounds we may expect another parallel between the belief of a 
God and transubstantiation, the effect of which will be the exposing of all re- 
ligion. This is a very destructive and mischievous method of proceeding ; but 
our comfort is that it is very unreasonable, as I hope hath fully appeared by 
this discourse." — Doctrine of the Trinity and Tranauhatantiation compared, at 
the end. 



NOTES. 399 

man as he yras going into Jericho or as he was leaving it ; or whether 
Judas bought himself the field of blood, or it was bought by the 
high priests : what connexion can there be between such questions, 
and the truth of God's love to man in the redemption, and of the re- 
surrection of our Lord ? Do we give to any narrative in the world, 
to any statement, verbal or written, no other alternative than that it 
must be either infallible or unworthy of belief? Is not such an al- 
ternative so extravagant as to be a complete reductio ad absurdum ? 
And yet such is the alternative which men seem generally to have 
admitted in considering the Scripture narratives : if a single error 
can be discovered, it is supposed to be fatal to the credibility of the 
whole. 

This has arisen from an unwarranted interpretation of the word 
" inspiration,'' and by a still more unwarranted inference. An in- 
spired work is supposed to mean a work to which God has commu- 
nicated his own perfections ; so that the sKghtest error or defect of 
any kind in it is inconceivable, and that which is other than perfect 
in all points cannot be inspired. This is the unwarranted interpre- 
tation of the word "inspiration." But then follows the still more 
unwarranted inference, — " If all the Scripture is not inspired, Chris- 
tianity cannot be true," an inference which is absolutely entitled to 
no other consideration than what it may seem to derive from the 
number of those who have either openly or tacitly maintained it. 

Most truly do I believe the Scriptures to be inspired ; the proofs 
of their inspiration rise continually with the study of them. The 
scriptural narratives are not only about divine things, but are them- 
selves divinely framed and superintended. I cannot conceive my 
conviction of this truth being otherwise than sure. Yet I must ac- 
knowledge that the scriptural narratives do not claim this inspiration 
for themselves ; so that if I should be obliged to resign my belief in 
it, which seems to me impossible, I yet should have no right to tax 
the Scriptures with having advanced a pretension proved to be un- 
founded ; their whole credibility as a most authentic history of the 
most important facts would remain untouched ; the gospel of St. 
John would still be a narrative as unimpeachable as that of Thucy- 
dides, which no sane man has ever disbelieved. 

So much for the unwarranted inference, that if the Scripture 
histories are not inspired, the great facts of the Christian revelation 
cannot be maintained. But it is no less an unwarranted interpreta- 
tion of the term "inspiration,'^ to suppose that it is equivalent to a 
communication of the Divine perfections. Surely, many of our 



400 NOTES. 

■words and many of our actions are spoken and done by the inspira- 
tion of God's Spirit, without whom we can do nothing acceptable to 
God. Yet does the Holy Spirit so insp'ire us as to communicate to 
us His own perfections? Are our best words or works utterly free 
from error or from sin ? All inspiration does not then destroy the 
human and fallible part in the nature which it inspires ; it does not 
change man into God. 

In one man, indeed, it was otherwise ; but He was both God and 
man. To Him the Spirit was given without measure ; and as his 
life was without sin, so his words were without error. But to all 
others the Spirit has been given by measure ; in almost infinitely 
different measure it is true : the difference between the inspiration 
of the common and perhaps unworthy Christian who merely said 
that "Jesus was the Lord," and that of Mo^es, or St. Paul, and St. 
John, is almost to our eyes beyond measuring. Still the position 
^remains, that the highest degree of inspiration given to man has 
still suffered to exist along with it a portion of human fallibility and 
corruption. 

Xow, then, consider the epistles of the blessed Apostle St. Paul, 
who had the Spirit of God so abundantly, that never we may sup- 
pose did any merely human being enjoy a larger share of it. En- 
dowed with the Spirit as a Christian, and daily receiving grace more 
largely, as he became more and more ripe for glory ; endowed with 
the Spirit's extraordinary gifts most eminently ; favoured also with 
an abundance of revelations, disclosing to him things ineffable and 
inconceivable, — are not his writings to be most truly called inspired? 
Can we doubt that, in what he has told us of things not seen, or not 
seen as yet, — of Him who pre-existed in the form of God before he 
was manifested in the form of man, — of that great day, when we 
shall arise incorruptible, and meet our Lord in the air, and be 
joined to him for ever, — can any reasonable mind doubt, that in 
speaking of these things he spoke what he had heard from God ; 
that to refuse to believe his testimony is really to disbelieve God? 

Yet this great Apostle expected that the world would come to an 
end in the generation then existing. When he wrote to the Thessa- 
lonians some years before his first imprisonment at Rome, he 
warned them, no doubt, against expecting the end im.mediately : but 
he appears still to have supposed that it would come in the lifetime 
of men then living. At a later period, when writing to the Corin- 
thians, his dissuasion of marriage seems to rest mainly upon this 
impression ; it is good not to marry, " on account of the distress 



NOTES. 401 

which is close at hand ;" {8ca tr^v ivsatuiocw wdyxr^v ; compare 2 Thess. 
ii. 2, wj- otL ii'satr^xsv rj r;uip(x toi) KvpCov.) " The time is thort," he 
adds ; " the fashion of thfs world is passing away." And again, 
when speaking of the resurrection, he says emphatically, " the dead 
shall rise incorruptible, and 2ce shall be changed ;" where the pro- 
noun being expressed in the original, xai rjusi^ aTJ^ayr^aoixsOa, shows 
that by the term " ice," he does not mean the dead, but those who 
were to be alive at Christ's coming. So again, still later, when 
writing from Rome to the Philippians, he tells them *' the Lord is 
at hand;" and later still, even in his first epistle to Timothy, he 
charges Timothy "to keep his commandment without spot, unre- 
bukable, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ." These and 
other passages cannot without violence be interpreted even singly in 
any other sense ; but taking them together, their meaning seems ab- 
solutely certain. Shall we say, then, that St. Paul entertained and 
expressed a belief which the event did not verify? We may say so, 
safely and reverently, in this instance ; for here he was most cer- 
tainly speaking as a man, and not by revelation ; as it has been pro- 
videntially ordered that our Lord's express words on this point have 
been recorded — "Of that day and hour knoweth no man; no, not 
the angels in heaven." Or again, shall we say, that St. Paul advised 
the Corinthians not to marry, chiefly on this ground ; and that this 
throws a suspicion over his directions in other points ? But again it 
has been ordered, that in this very place, and no where else in all 
his writing, St. Paul has expressly said that he was only giving his 
judgment as a Christian, and not speaking with divine authority; — 
the concluding words of the chapter, 8oxm de xayuj rtvEv/xa Obov txsiVy 
do not signify, as our Version renders them, "And I think also that 
I have the Spirit of God," as if he were confirming his own judg- 
ment by an assertion of his inspiration in a sense beyond that of 
common Christians ; but the words say, "And I think that I too have 
the Spirit of God," " I too as well as others whom you might con- 
sult, so that my judgment is no less worthy of attention than 
theirs." But it is his Christian judgment only that he is giving, as 
he expressly declares, and not his apostolical command or revela- 
tion ; a distinction which he never makes elsewhere, and which is 
in itself so striking, that we seem to recognise in it God's especial 
mercy to us, that our faith in St. Paul's general declarations of divine 
truth might not be shaken, because in one particular point he was 
permitted to speak as a man, giving express notice at the same time 
that he was doing^so. 

34* 



402 NOTES. 

Now it is at least remarkable, that in the only two instances in 
which the existence of any absence of divine authority is to be 
discerned in St. Paul's epistles, provision is actually made by God's 
goodness to prevent them from prejudicing our faith in St. Paul's 
divine authority generally. And so in whatever points any error 
may be discoverable in Scripture, we shall find either that the errors 
are of a kind wholly unconnected with the revelation of what God 
has done to us, and of what we are to do towards Him ; and there- 
fore are perfectly consistent with the inspiration of the writer, unless 
we take that unwarranted notion of'inspiration which considers it as 
equivalent to a communication of God's attributes perfectly ; (and 
of this kind are any eiTors that may exist either in points of physical 
science, or of chronology, or of history:) or if there be anything 
else which appears inconsistent with inspiration, in the sense in 
which we really may and do apply it to the Scriptures, namely, that 
they are a perfect guide and rule in all matters concerning our rela- 
tions with God, then we shall find that God has made some special 
provision for the case, to remove what it otherwise might have had 
of real difficulty. 

This merciful care is above all to be recognised with regard to one 
point, which otherwise would, I think, have been a difficulty actually 
insuperable : I mean the manifestly imperfect moral standard, which 
in some cases is displayed in the characters of good men in the Old 
Testament. Put the gospel by the side of the law and history of 
the Israelites ; observe what the law permitted, and public opinion 
under the law did not condemn ; observe the actions recorded of 
persons who are declared to have been eminently good, and to have 
received God's especial blessing ; and it is manifest that had not our 
Lord himself vouchsafed his help, one of two things must have hap- 
pened — either that we must have followed the old heresy of rejecting 
the Old Testament altogether, or else that our respect for the Old 
Testament must have impeded the growth of the more perfect law of 
Christ. The true solution I do not think that we could have dis- 
covered, or ventured to admit on less authority than our Lord's. 
But his express declaration, that some things in the law itself were 
permitted, because nothing higher could then have been borne, and 
his stating in detail that in several points what was accounted good 
or allowable in the former dispensation was not so really, while at 
the same time he constantly refers to the Old Testament as divine, 
and confirms its language of blessing with respect to its most emi- 
nent characters, has completely cleared to us the whole question, and 



NOTES. 403 

enables us to recognize the divinity of the Old Testament and the 
holiness of its characters, without lying against our consciences and 
our more perfect revelation, by justifying the actions of those char- 
acters as right, essentially and abstractedly, although they were 
excusable, or in some cases actually virtuous, according to the stand- 
ard of right and wrong which prevailed under the law. 

After observing God's gracious care for us in this instance, as well 
as in those which I have noticed before, I cannot but feel that we 
may safely trust Him for every other similar case, if any such there 
be, and that he will not permit our faith either in him or in his holy 
word to be shaken, because we do not attempt to close our eyes 
against truth, nor seek to support our faith by sophistry and false- 
hood. Feeling what the Scriptures are, I would not give unneces- 
sary pain to any one by an enumeration of those points in which the 
literal historical statement of an inspired writer has been vainly 
defended. Some instances will probably occur to most readers ; 
others are perhaps not known, and never will be known to many, 
nor is it at all needful or desirable that they should know them. 
But if ever they are brought before them, let them not try to put 
them aside unfairly, from a fear that they will injure our faith. Let 
us not do evil that evil may be escaped from ; and it is an evil, and 
the fruitful parent of evils innumerable, to do violence to our under- 
standing or to our reason in their own appointed fields ; to maintain 
falsehood in their despite, and reject the truth which they sanction. 
If writers of Mr. Newman's school will persist in displaying the 
difficulties of the Scripture before the eyes of those who had not been 
before aware of them, let those who are so cruelly tempted be con- 
jured not to be dismayed; to refuse utterly to surrender up their 
sense of truth, — to persist in rejecting the unchristian falsehoods 
which they are called upon to worship ; sure that after all that can 
be said, that system will remain false to the end ; and their Christian 
faith, if they do not faithlessly attempt to strengthen it by unlawful 
means, will stand no less unshaken. 

In conclusion. Christian faith rests upon Scripture ; and as it is 
in itself agreeable to the highest reason, so the authenticity of the 
Scriptures on which it rests is assured to us by the deliberate con- 
clusions of the understanding ; nor is any '* mortal leap" necessary 
at any part of the process; nor any rejection of one truth, in order 
to retain our hold on another. And if it should happen, as in all 
probability it will, that we shall be called upon to correct in some 
respects our notions as to the Scriptures, and so far to hold views 



404 NOTES. 

different from those of our fathers, wc should consider that our 
fathers did not, and could not stand in our circumstances ; that the 
knowledge which may call upon us to relinquish some of their 
opinions, was a knowledge which they had not. Till this knowledge 
comes to us, let us hold our fathers' opinions as they held them ; but 
when it does come, it will come by God's will, and to do his work : 
and that w^ork will, assuredly, not be our separation from our father's 
faith; but if we follow God's guidance humbly and cheerfully, 
clinging to God the while in personal devotion and obedience, we 
may be made aware of what to them would have been an inexplica- 
ble difficulty, and which was, therefore, hidden from their knowledge; 
and yet, " through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, we believe 
that we shall be saved even as they." 



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THE COMFORTER, 

Or, Thoughts on the Influence of the Holy Spirit. 1 vol., gloth. 

CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

One vol., cloth. 

The FINGER of GOD, in Creation, The Spread of Cliristiaiuty, &c. 

One vol., cloth. 



LINDSAY &. BLAKlSrON'S PUBLICATIONS 



PROCTOR'S HISTORY OF THE CRUSM>ES 

With 154 Illustrations. 



HISTOHY OF THE CEUSADES, 

THEIR RISE, PROGRESS, AND RESULTS. By Major Proctor, cf th« 
Royal Military Academy. 



CONTENTS. 
CHAPTER I. The First Crusade. — Causes of the Crnsades — Preaching oi tht 
First Crusade — Peter the Hermit — The Crusade nndertaken by the People — 
The Crusade undertaken by the Kings and Nobles — The First Crusaders at 
Constantinople — The Siege of Nice — Defeat of the Turks — Seizure of Edessa — 
Siege and Capture of Antioch by the Crusaders — Defence of Antioch by the 
Crusaders — Siege and Capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders. 

CHAPTER II. The Second Crusade.— State of the Latin Fingdom— Origin 
of the Orders of Religious Chivalry — Fall of Edessa — Preaching of the Second 
Crusade — Louis VII. and Conrad III. in Palestine. 

CHAPTER III. The Third Crusade.— The Rise of Saladin— Rattle of Tibe- 
rias, and Fall of Jerusalem — The Germans undertake the Crusade — Richard 
Cceur de Lion in Palestine. 

CHAPTER IV. The Fourth Crusade.— The French, Germans, and Italians 
unite in the Crusade — Affairs of the Eastern Empire — Expedition against Con- 
stantinople — Second Siege of Constantinople. 

CHAPTER V. The Last Four Crusades.— History of the Latin Empb-e of 
the East— The Fifth Crusade— The Sixth Crusade— The Seventh Crusade- -The 
Eighth Crusade. 

CHAPTER VI. — Consequences op the Crusades. 



At the present time, when a misunderstanding concerning the Holy Places at 
Jerusalem has given rise to a war involving four of the great Powers of Europe, 
the mind naturally reverts to the period when nearly all the military powers of 
Europe made a descent on Palestine for the recovery of them from the possession 
of the infidels. It would seem that the interest in these places is still alive ; and 
the history of the Holy Wars in Palestine during a considerable portion of the 
Middle Ages, maybe supposed to form an attractive theme for the general reader. 

Under this impression Major Proctor's excellent "History of the Crusades" has 
been carefully revised, some additions made, a series of illustrative engravings, 
executed by first-rate artists, introduced, and the edition is now respectfully sub- 
mitted to the public. 

The editor, in the performance of his duty, has been struck with the masterly, 
clear, and lucid method in which the author has executed the work — a work of 
considerable diCBculty, when we consider the long period and the multiplicity of 
important events embraced in the history; nor has the editor been less impressed 
with the vigorous style, and the happy power of giving vividness, colour, and 
thrilling interest to the events which he narrates, so conspicuous in Major Proc- 
tor's history. No other historian of the Crusades has succeeded in comprising so 
ct»mpletc and entertaining a narrative in so reasonable a compass. 

& Handsome OctaTO Volume, bound in Cloth, with appropriate Designs, $2 25 
" " " elegantly gilt, 3 00 



IINDSAY &; BLAKISTON'S PUBLICATIONS. 



AN ILLUSTRATED LIFE OF MAETIN LUTHEE, 

fHE GREAT GERMAN REFORMER. With a Sketch of the Reformation in Germany. 
Edited, with an Introduction, by the Rev. Theophtlcs Stokk, D.D., lat« Pastor of St 
Mark's Luthern Church, Philadelphia. Beautifully Illcsteatzd by sixteen design*, printed 
on fine paper. A handsome octavo volume. 

Price, In clotli, gilt backsj - ■ ■ ■ ■ $3 00 

full gilt, ------ 350 

In embossed leather, marble edges, gilt backs, Sttc^ 3 35 

The wirld owes much to Luther, and the Reformation of which he was the prominent leader, and 
notnin?, save the pure, simple word of God, will do more towards secarin? the prevalence and per-* 
petuatin? the influence of the principles of religious liberty for which he and the other Reformers 
contended, than the circulation of a book in which the mental processes by which he arrived at tiii 
conclusions, are set forth. We can safely recommend this book as one that is worthy of a place in 
every dwelling, and we hope its circulation may be as wide as its merits are Aeserying.—Evatiotltoal 
Magazine. 

THE LIFE OF PHILIP MELANCHTHON, 

THE PRIEND ANT) COMPANION OF LUTHER, According to his Inner and Outer Lift. 
Translated from the German of Charles Frederick Ledderhose, by the Rev. G. F. Kroth, 
Pastor of the Trinity Lutheran Church, Lancaster, Pa. "With a Pobtrait of MelanchthoiL 
In one Volume, 12mo. Price 81 00. 



THE PARABLES OF FRED'K ADOLPHTJS KEITMMACHEE, 

From the Feventh German edition. Elegantly Illustrated by Tvrenty-sis Original DesignB, 
beautifully printed on fine paper. A handsome demy octavo volume. 

Blegantly bound In clotb, gilt backs, - ■ - Price $1 75 
fnll gilt sides, backs and edges, 3 50 

Turkey nxorocco, antique, * 4 00 

The simple and Christian parables of Krammacher, chiefly the prodactions of his yoaneer years, 
have acquired a wide popularity, and have long afforded a fund on which our periodicals have freel] 
drawn. In their collected form they have parsed through various editions in Germany, but we douM 
whether any of them have been so tasteful and beautiful in all their appliances as the one before us. 
The typography is very chaste, and the illustrations neat and appropriate.— PrMftyterian. 



THE CHEISTIAIJ'S DAILY DELIGHT. 

A SACRED GARLANT), CULLED FROM ENGLISH AND AMERICAN POETS. Beauti. 
felly IiicSTRATn; by Eight Engravings on Steel. 

In one -rolume, demy, octavo, clotb, gilt backs, - Price St 50 

full gilt sides, backs and edges, 3 33 

tn th» attractive volume we find much to please the eye ; but the most valuable rrcommecdttioo 
©f the work is found ik the lessons of piety, virtue, morality, and mercy, whic^ «ro thrown tf»get!iii» 
Ik thii many-ccioured guland of poetic Qowera—FpiscopcU lUcordtr. 



